LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Shelf .rB.55 



UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. 



iSoofifi ty? |>. 3D. C&omtt. 



WALDEN ; or, Life in the Woods. i2mo, gilt top, $1.50. 

A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIV- 
ERS. i2mo, gilt top, $1.50. 

EXCURSIONS IN FIELD AND FOREST. With a Bio- 
graphical Sketch by R. W. Emerson. i2mo, gilt top, 
$1.50. 

THE MAINE WOODS. 12 mo, gilt top, $1.50. 

CAPE COD. i2mo, gilt top, $1.50. 

LETTERS TO VARIOUS PERSONS, to which are added 
a few Poems. 121110, gilt top, $1.50. 

A YANKEE IN CANADA. With Antislavery and Reform 
Papers, urao, gilt top, $1.50. 

EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. Fromthejour- 
nal of Henry D. Thoreau. i2mo, gilt top, $1.50. 

SUMMER. Selections descriptive of Summer from the Jour- 
nal of Henry D. Thoreau. i2mo, gilt top, $ 1.50. 

WINTER. Selections from the Journal of Henry D. Tho- 
reau. i2mo, gilt top, $1.50. 

The above ten volumes, $15.00; half calf, $27.50. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

Boston and New York. 



WINTER: FROM THE JOURNAL 
OF HENRY D. THOKEAU 



EDITED BY H. G. O. BLAKE 



Knowledge means 
Ever-renewed assurance by defeat 
That victory is somehow still to reach ; 
But love is victory, the prize itself. 
Browning 



E^u^^u^i 




^^^^^E^^te^^ 


^^^^^fc^Wffl 






lillrfMllyillll 


M 


mMmmmsj 


*j8 



- Hi. 



% 



> "3 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1888 






V^ 









Copyright, 1887, 
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

Ml rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge : 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co. 



INTRODUCTORY. 

To those who are not specially interested in 
the character of Thoreau, who regard him 
merely as a writer who has sometimes expressed 
original thoughts in a happy way, who has 
made some interesting observations of natural 
phenomena, and at times written beautifully 
about nature, it may seem hardly worth while 
to publish more of his journal. But from time 
to time I meet with or receive letters from 
persons who feel the same deep interest in him 
as an individual, in his thoughts and views of 
life, that I do, and who, I am sure, will eagerly 
welcome any additional expression of that indi- 
viduality. Of course there are many such per- 
sons of whom I do not hear. 

Thoreau himself regarded literature as alto- 
gether secondary to life, strange as this may 
seem to those who think of him as a hermit 
or dreamer, shunning what are commonly con- 
sidered as among the most important practical 
realities, trade, politics, the church, the institu- 
tions of society generally. He took little part in 



IV INTRODUCTORY. 

these things because he believed they would 
stand in the way of his truest life, and to attain 
that, as far as possible, he knew to be his first 
business in the world. Even in a philanthropic 
point of view, any superficial benefit he might 
confer by throwing himself into the current of 
society would be as nothing compared with the 
loss of real power and influence which would 
result from disobedience to his highest instincts. 
" Ice that merely performs the office of a burning 
glass does not do its duty." It was not sufficient 
for him to entertain and express as an author 
" subtle thoughts," but he aspired rather " so to 
love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, 
a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, 
and trust," " to solve some of the problems of 
life not only theoretically, but practically." It is 
the clear insight early creating a deep, persistent 
determination so to live, rather than his genius, 
which gives value to Thoreau's work, though 
this insight itself may well be regarded as the 
highest form of genius. It is the attitude one 
takes toward the world, far more than any abili- 
ties he may possess, which gives significance to 
his life. It has been well said by Brownlee 
Brown that " courage, piety, wit, zeal, learning, 
eloquence, avail nothing, unless the man is 
right." 



INTRODUCTORY, V 

As the young pass out of childhood, that fore- 
taste or symbol of the kingdom of heaven, the 
expression of serene innocence is too apt to fade 
from their faces and the clouds to gather there, 
while it is considered a matter of course that 
each one should attach himself to the social 
machine. One becomes a lawyer, another a 
clergyman, another a physician, another a 
merchant, and the treasure which the childlike 
soul has lost is sought to be regained in some 
general and far-off way by society at large. 
But the burden which men thus readily take 
upon themselves in the common race for comfort, 
luxury, and social position is out of all proportion 
to their spiritual vitality, and so the truest life 
of individuals is being continually sacrificed to 
the Juggernaut of society. Men associate al- 
most universally in the shallower and falser 
part of their natures, so that while institutions 
may seem to flourish, corruption is also gaining 
ground through the spiritual failure of individ- 
uals ; finally the fabric falls, and a new form 
rises to go through the same round. The 
highest form of civilization at the present day 
seems to be an advance upon all that have pre- 
ceded it, though in some particulars it plainly 
falls behind. Perhaps only by this alternate 
rising and falling can the human race advance. 



vi INTRODUCTORY. 

But the progress of individuals is the essential 
thing ; only so far as that takes place will the 
real progress of the race follow, and those per- 
sons contribute most to this real progress who, 
stepping aside from the ordinary routine, give 
us by their lives and thoughts a new sense of 
the reality of what is best, of the ideal towards 
which all civilization must aim ; who are so in 
love with truth, rectitude, and the beauty of the 
world, including in this, first of all, the original, 
unimpaired beauty of the human soul, that they 
have little care for material prosperity, social 
position, or public opinion. It was not merely 
nature in the ordinary sense, plants, animals, the 
landscape, etc., which attracted Thoreau. He 
is continually manifesting a human interest in 
natural objects, and thoughts of an ideal friend- 
ship are forever haunting him. Touching the 
highest and fairest relation of one human soul 
to another, I do not believe there can be found 
in literature, ancient or modern, anything finer, 
anything which comes closer home to our best 
experience, than what appears in Thoreau's 
writings generally, and especially in " Wednes- 
day " of the " Week on the Concord and Merri- 
mack Rivers." 

THE EDITOR. 



WINTER 



December 21, 1851. My difficulties with my 
friends are such as no frankness will settle. 
There is no precept in the New Testament that 
will assist me. . . . Others can confess and ex- 
plain, I cannot. It is not that I am too proud. 
But explanation is not what is wanted. Friend- 
ship is the unspeakable joy and blessing that 
result to two or more individuals who from con- 
stitution sympathize. Such natures are liable to 
no mistakes, but will know each other through 
thick and thin. Between two by nature alike and 
fitted to sympathize there is no veil, and there 
can be no obstacle. Who are the estranged ? 
Two friends explaining. 

I feel sometimes as if I could say to my 
friends, " My friends, I am aware how I have 
outraged you, how I have seemingly preferred 
hate to love, seemingly treated others kiudly 
and you unkindly, sedulously concealed my love, 
and sooner or later expressed all and more than 
all my hate." I can imagine how I might utter 



2 WINTER. 

something like this, in some moment never to 
be realized, but, at the same time, let me say- 
frankly that I feel I might say it with too little 
regret, that I am under an awful necessity to be 
what I am. If the truth were known, which I 
do not know, I have no concern with those 
friends whom I misunderstand or who misunder- 
stand me. The fates only are unkind that keep 
us asunder ; but my friend is ever kind. I am 
of the nature of stone. It takes the summer's 
sun to warm it. — My acquaintances sometimes 
imply that I am too cold, but each thing is warm 
enough for its kind. Is the stone too cold 
which absorbs the heat of the summer sun, 
and does not part with it during the night? 
Crystals, though they be of ice, are not too cold 
to melt ; it was in melting that they were 
formed. Cold ! I am most sensible of warmth 
in winter days. It is not the warmth of fire 
that you would have ; everything is warm or 
cold according to its nature. It is not that I 
am too cold, but that our warmth and coldness 
are not of the same nature. Hence when I am 
absolutely warmest, I may be coldest to you. 
Crystal does not complain of crystal any more 
than the dove of its mate. You who complain 
that I am cold, find Nature cold. To me she 
is warm. My heat is latent to you. Fire itself 
is cold to whatever is not of a nature to be 



WINTER. 3 

warmed by it. . . . That I am cold means that I 
am of another nature. . . . 

How swiftly the earth appears to revolve at 
sunset, — which at midday appears to rest on its 
axis. 

Dec. 21, 1853. We are tempted to call these 
the finest days of the year. Take Fair Haven 
Pond, for instance, a perfectly level plain of 
snow, untrodden as yet by any fisherman, sur- 
rounded by snow-clad hills, dark, evergreen 
woods, and reddish oak leaves, so pure and still. 
The last rays of the sun falling on Baker Farm 
reflect a clear pink color. — I see the feathers 
of a partridge strewn along on the snow for a 
long distance, the work of some hawk, perhaps, 
for there is no track. 

What a groveling appetite for profitless jest 
and amusement our countrymen have ! Next to 
a good dinner, at least, they love a good joke, 
to have their sides tickled, to laugh sociably, as 
in the East they bathe and are shampooed. Cu- 
rators of Lyceums write to me, 

Dear Sir, — I hear that you have a lecture 
of some humor. Will you do us the favor to 
read it before the Bungtown Institute ? 

Dec. 22, 1851. If I am thus seemingly cold 
compared with my companion's warm, who 
knows but mine- is a less transient glow, a stead- 
ier and more equable heat, like that of the 



4 WINTER. 

earth in spring, in which the flowers spring and 
expand. It is not words that I wish to hear or 
to utter, but relations that I wish to stand in, 
and it oftener happens, methinks, I go away- 
unmet, unrecognized, ungreeted in my offered 
relation, than that you are disappointed of 
words. 

I have seen in the form, in the expression of 
face, of a child three years old the tried magna- 
nimity and grave nobility of ancient and departed 
worthies. I saw a little Irish boy, come from the 
distant shanty in the woods over the bleak rail- 
road to school this morning, take his last step 
from the last snow-drift on to the school- 
house door-step, floundering still, saw not his 
face nor his profile, only his mien ; I imagined, 
saw clearly in imagination, his old worthy face 
behind the sober visor of his cap. Ah! this 
little Irish boy, I know not why, revives to my 
mind the worthies of antiquity. He is not 
drawn, he never was drawn, in a willow wagon. 
He progresses by his own brave steps. Has not 
the world waited for such a generation. Here 
he condescends to his a b c, without one smile, 
who has the lore of worlds uncounted in his 
brain. He speaks not of the adventures of the 
causeway. What was the bravery of Leonidas 
and his three hundred boys at the Pass of Ther- 
mopylae to this infant's ! They but dared to die, 



WINTER. 5 

he dares to live, and take his " reward of merit," 
perchance (without relaxing his face into a 
smile), that overlooks his unseen and unregard- 
able merits. Little Johnny Riorden, who faces 
cold and routs it like a Persian army. While 
the charitable waddle about cased in furs, he, 
lively as a cricket, passes them on his way to 
school. 

Dec. 22, 1853. Surveying the Hunt farm. 
A rambling, rocky, wild, moorish pasture this 
of Hunt's, with two or three great white oaks 
to shade the cattle, which the farmer would not 
take fifty dollars apiece for, though the ship- 
builder wanted them. 

It is pleasant, as you are cutting a path 
through a swamp, to see the color of the differ- 
ent woods, the yellowish dogwood, the green 
prinos (?), and on the upland, the splendid yel- 
low barberry. . . . You cannot go out so early 
but you will find the track of some wild crea- 
ture. 

Returning home just after the sun had sunk 
below the horizon, I saw from N. Barrett's a 
fire made by boys on the ice near the Red 
bridge which looked like the bright reflection 
of the setting sun from the water under the 
bridge, so clear, so little lurid in this winter 
evening. 

Dec. 22, 1858. p. m. To Walden. I see in 



6 WINTER. 

the cut near the shanty site quite a flock of 
Fringilla hyemalis and goldfinches together on 
the snow and weeds and ground. Hear the 
well-known mew and watery twitter of the last, 
and the drier " chill chill " of the former. These 
burning yellow birds, with a little black and 
white in their coat flaps, look warm above the 
snow. There may be thirty goldfinches, very 
brisk and pretty tame. They hang, head down- 
wards, on the weeds. I hear of their coming to 
pick sunflower seeds in Melvin's garden these 
days. 

Dec. 22, 1859. Another fine winter day. 
— p. M. To Flint's Pond. . . . We pause and 
gaze into the Mill brook on the Turnpike bridge. 
I see a good deal of cress there on the bottom 
for a rod or two, the only green thing to be 
seen. ... Is not this the plant which most, or 
most conspicuously, preserves its greenness in the 
winter ? ... It is as green as ever, and waving 
in the stream as in summer. 

How nicely is Nature adjusted. The least 
disturbance of her equilibrium is betrayed and 
corrects itself. As I looked down on the sur- 
face of the brook, I was surprised to see a leaf 
floating, as I thought, up stream, but I was mis- 
taken. The motion of a particle of dust on the 
surface of any brook far inland shows which 
way the earth declines toward the sea, which 



WINTER. 7 

way lies the constantly descending route, and 
the only one. 

I see in the chestnut woods near Flint's Pond 
where squirrels have collected the small chestnut 
burs left on the trees, and opened them gener- 
ally at the base of the trunks on the snow. 
These are, I think, all small and imperfect burs, 
which do not so much as open in the fall, and 
are rejected then, but hanging on the tree, they 
have this use, at least, as the squirrels' winter 
food. . . . 

The fisherman stands still and erect on the 
ice, awaiting our approach, as usual forward to 
say that he has had no luck. He has been here 
since early morning, and for some reason or 
other he has had no luck ; the fishes won't bite, 
you won't catch him here again in a hurry. 
They all tell the same story. The amount of it 
is, he has had " fisherman's luck," and if you 
walk that way, you may find him at his old post 
to-morrow. It is hard, to be sure ; four little 
fishes to be divided between three men, and two 
and a half miles to walk ; and you have only 
got a more ravenous appetite for the supper 
which you have not earned. However, the pond 
floor is not a bad place whereon to spend a win- 
ter day. 

Dec. 23, 1837. Crossed the river to-day on 
the ice. Though the weather is raw and win- 



8 WINTER. 

try, and the ground covered with snow, I noticed 
a solitary robin. . . . 

In the side of the high bank by the leaning 
hemlock there were some curious crystalliza- 
tions. Wherever the water or other cause had 
formed a hole in the bank, its throat and outer 
edge, like the entrance to a citadel of the olden 
time, bristled with a glistening ice armor. In 
one place you might see minute ostrich feathers 
which seemed the waving plumes of the war- 
riors filing into the fortress, in another, the 
glancing fan-shaped banners of the Liliputian 
host, and in another, the needle-shaped particles 
collected into bundles resembling the plumes of 
the pine, might pass for a phalanx of spears. 
The whole hill was like an immense quartz rock 
with minute crystals sparkling from innumer- 
able crannies. 

Dec. 23, 1841. The best man's spirit makes 
a fearful sprite to haunt his tomb. The ghost 
of a priest is no better than that of a highway- 
man. It is pleasant to hear of one who has 
blest whole regions after his death by having 
frequented them while alive, who has profaned 
or tabooed no place by being buried in it. It 
adds not a little to the fame of Little John that 
his grave was long " celebrous for the yielding of 
excellent whetstones." 

A forest is in all mythologies a sacred place ; 



WINTER. 9 

as the oaks among the Druids, and the grove of 
Esreria, and even in more familiar and common 
life, as " Barnsdale wood " and " Sherwood. " 
Had Kobin Hood no Sherwood to resort to, it 
would be difficult to invest his story with the 
charms it has got. It is always the tale that is 
untold, the deeds done, and the life lived in the 
unexplored scenery of the wood, that charm us 
and make us children again, to read his ballads 
and hear of the greenwood tree. 

Dec. 23, 1851. ... It is a record of the mel- 
low and ripe moments that I would keep. I 
would not preserve the husk of life, but the ker- 
nel. When the cup of life is full and flowing 
over, preserve some drops as a specimen sample ; 
when the intellect enlightens the heart and the 
heart warms the intellect. — Thoughts sometimes 
possess our heads when we are up and about our 
business which are the exact counterpart of the 
bad dreams we sometimes have by night, and I 
think the intellect is equally inert in both cases. 
Very frequently, no doubt, the thoughts men 
have are the consequence of something they 
have eaten or done. Our waking moods and 
humors are our dreams, but whenever we are 
truly awake and serene and healthy in all our 
senses, we have memorable visions. Who that 
takes up a book wishes for the report of the 
clogged bowels or the impure blood ? 



10 WINTER. 

Dec. 23, 1855. p. m. To Conantum End. A 
very bright and pleasant day with a remarkably 
soft wind from a little N. of W. The frost has 
come out so in the rain of yesterday, that I avoid 
the muddy plowed fields, and keep on the green 
ground which shines with moisture. . . . 

I admire those old root fences which have al- 
most disappeared from tidy fields, white pine 
roots got out when the neighboring meadow was 
a swamp, the monuments of many a revolution. 
These roots have not penetrated into the ground, 
but spread over the surface, and having been cut 
off four or five feet from the stump were hauled 
off and set up on their edges for a fence. The 
roots were not merely interwoven, but grown to- 
gether into solid frames, full of loop-holes like 
Gothic windows of various sizes and all shapes, 
triangular, and oval, and harp-like, and the slen- 
derer parts are dry and resonant like harp strings. 
They are rough and unapproachable, with a hun- 
dred snags and horns, which bewilder and balk 
the calculation of the walker who would sur- 
mount them. The part of the trees above 
ground present no such fantastic forms. Here 
is one seven paces or more than a rod long, six 
feet high in the middle, and yet only one foot 
thick, and two men could turn it up. In this 
case the roots were six or nine inches thick at 
the extremities. The roots of pines in swamps 



WINTER. 11 

grow thus in the form of solid frames or rack- 
ets, and those of different trees are interwoven 
withal so that they stand on a very broad foot, 
and stand or fall together to some extent be- 
fore the blasts as herds meet the assaults of 
beasts of prey with serried front. You have 
thus only to dig into the swamp a little way to 
find your fence, post, rails, and slats already 
solidly grown together, and of material more 
durable than any timber. How pleasing a 
thought that a- field should be fenced with the 
roots of the trees got out in clearing the land a 
century before. I regret them as mementos of 
the primitive forest. The tops of the same trees 
made into fencing stuff would have decayed gen- 
erations ago. These roots are singularly unob- 
noxious to the effects of moisture. . . . 

Think of the life of a kitten, ours, for in- 
stance. Last night her eyes set in a fit ; it is 
doubtful if she will ever come out of it, and she 
is set away in a basket and submitted to the re- 
cuperative powers of nature ; this morning run- 
ning up the clothes' pole, and erecting her back 
in frisky sport to every passer. 

Dec. 23, 1856. Some savage tribes must 
share the experience of the lower animals in 
their relation to man. With what thoughts 
must the Esquimau manufacture his knife from 
the rusty hoop of a cask drifted to his shores, not 



12 WINTER. 

a natural, but an artificial product, the work of 
man's hands, the waste of the commerce of a 
superior race whom perhaps he never saw ! 

The cracking of the ground is a phenomenon 
of the coldest nights. After being waked by 
the loud cracks of the 18th at Amherst, a man 
told me in the morning that he had seen a crack 
running across the plain (I saw it) almost 
broad enough to put his hand into. This was 
an exaggeration. It was not one fourth of an 
inch wide. I saw a great many the same fore- 
noon running across the road in Nashua, every 
few rods, and also by our house in Concord the 
same day when I got home. So it seems the 
ground was cracking all the country over. Part- 
ly, no doubt, because there was so little snow, 
or none. None at Concord. 

If the writer would interest readers, he must 
report so much life, using a certain satisfaction 
always as a point (Tappui. However mean and 
limited, it must be a genuine and contented life 
that he speaks out of. His readers must have 
the essence or oil of himself, tried out of the fat 
of his experience and joy. 

Dec. 23, 1860. . . . Larks were about our 
house the middle of this month. 

Dec. 24, 1840. The same sun has not yet 
shone on me and my friend. He would hardly 
have to look at me to recognize me, but glimmer 



WINTER. 13 

with half-shut eye like some friendly distant 
taper when we are benighted. — I do not talk 
to any intellect in nature, but am presuming an 
infinite heart somewhere into which I play. 

Dec. 24, 1841. I want to go soon and live 
away by the pond where I shall hear only the 
wind whispering among the reeds. It will be 
success if I shall have left myself behind. But 
my friends ask what I will do when I get there ! 
Will it not be employment enough to watch the 
progress of the seasons ? 

Dec. 24, 1850. Saw a shrike pecking to 
pieces a small bird, apparently a snowbird. At 
length he took him up in his bill, almost half as 
big as himself, and flew slowly off with his prey 
dangling from his beak. I find that I had not 
associated such actions with my idea of birds. 
It was not bird-like. 

It is never so cold but it melts somewhere. 
Our mason well remarked that he had some- 
times known it to be melting and freezing at the 
same time on a particular side of a house ; while 
it was melting on the roof, icicles were forming 
under the eaves. It is always melting and freez- 
ing at the same time where icicles are formed. 

Our thoughts are with those among the dead 
into whose sphere we are rising, or who are now 
rising into our own. Others we inevitably for- 
get, though they be brothers and sisters. Thus 



14 WINTER. 

the departed may be nearer to us than when 
they were present. At death, our friends and 
relatives either draw nearer to us, and are found 
out, or depart farther from us, and are forgot- 
ten. Friends are as often brought nearer to- 
gether as separated by death. 

Dec. 24, 1853. . . . Walden almost entirely 
open again. Skated across Flint's Pond, for the 
most part smooth, but with rough spots where 
the rain had not melted the snow. From the hill 
beyond I get an arctic view N. W. The moun- 
tains are of a cold slate color. It is as if they 
bounded the continent toward Behring's Straits. 

In Weston's field in springy land on the edge 
of a swamp I counted thirty-three or four of 
those large silvery brown cocoons within a rod 
or two, and probably there are many more ; 
about a foot from the ground, commonly on 
the main stem, though sometimes on a branch 
close to the stem, of the alder, sweet fern, brake, 
etc. The largest are four inches long by two 
and one half wide, bag-shaped and wrinkled, and 
partly concealed by dry leaves, alder, fern, etc., 
attached, as if sprinkled over them. This evi- 
dence of cunning in so humble a creature is 
affecting, for I am not ready to refer it to an 
intelligence which the creature does not share, 
as much as we do the prerogative of reason. 
This radiation of the brain ! The bare silvery 



WINTER. 15 

cocoon would otherwise be too obvious. The 
worm has evidently said to itself, man or some 
other creature may come by and see my casket. 
I will disguise it, will hang a screen before it. 
Brake, and sweet fern, and alder leaves are not 
only loosely sprinkled over it and dangling from 
it, but often, as it were, pasted close upon and 
almost incorporated into it. 

Dec. 24, 1854. Some three inches of snow 
fell last night and this morning, concluding 
with a fine rain, which produced a slight glaze, 
the first of the winter. This gives the woods 
a hoary aspect, and increases the stillness by 
making the leaves immovable even in a consid- 
erable wind. 

Dec. 24, 1856. . . . Noticed at E. end of 
the westernmost Andromeda Pond the slender 
spikes of Lycopus with half-a-dozen little spher- 
ical dark brown whorls of pungently fragrant 
or spicy seeds, somewhat nutmeg-like or even 
like nagroot (?) when bruised. I am not sure 
that the seeds of any other mint are thus fra- 
grant now. It scents your handkerchief or 
pocket-book finely when the crumbled whorls 
are sprinkled over them. — It was very pleas- 
ant walking thus before the storm was over, in 
the soft, subdued light. We are more domes- 
ticated in nature when our vision is confined to 
near and familiar objects. Did not see a track 



16 WINTER. 

of any animal till returning, near Well-Meadow 
Field, where many foxes (?), one of whom I 
had a glimpse of, had been coursing back and 
forth in the path and near it for three quarters 
of a mile. They had made quite a path. 

I do not take snuff. In my winter walks 
I stoop and bruise between my thumb and fin- 
ger the dry whorls of the Lycopus or water 
horehound, just rising above the snow, stripping 
them off, and smell that. That is as near as I 
come to the Spice Islands. 

Dec. 24, 1859. ... I measure the blueberry 
bush on Fairhaven Pond Island. The five 
stems are united at the ground so as to make 
one round and solid trunk thirty-one inches in 
circumference, but probably they have grown 
together there, for they become separate at 
about six inches above. They may have sprung 
from different seeds of one berry. At three feet 
from the ground they measure eleven, eleven, 
eleven and one half, eight, and six and one half 
or on an average nine and one half inches. I 
climbed up and found a comfortable seat, with 
my feet four feet from the ground. There was 
room for three or four more there, but unfortu- 
nately this was not the season for berries. 
There were several other clumps of large ones 
in the neighborhood. One clump close by the 
former contained twenty-three stems within a 



WINTER. 17 

diameter of three feet, and their average diame- 
ter at three feet from the ground was about two 
inches These had not been cut because they 
stood on this small island which has little wood 
beside, and therefore had grown thus large. . . . 

The stems rise up in a winding and zigzag 
manner, one sometimes resting in the forks of 
its neighbor. Judging from those whose rings 
I have counted, the largest of those stems must 
be about sixty years old. 

Dec. 25, 1840. The character of Washing-^k 
ton has, after all, been undervalued, because not 
valued correctly. He was a proper Puritan 
hero. It is his erectness and persistency which 
attract me. A few simple deeds with a digni- 
fied silence for background, and that is all. He 
never fluctuated, nor lingered, nor stooped, nor 
swerved, but was nobly silent and assured. 
He was not the darling of the people, as no man 
of integrity can ever be, but was as much re- 
spected as loved. His instructions to his stew- 
ard, his refusal of a crown, his interview with 
his officers at the termination of the war, his 
thoughts after his retirement, as expressed in a 
letter to La Fayette, his remarks to another cor- 
respondent on his being chosen president, his 
last words to Congress, and the unparalleled re- 
spect which his most distinguished contempora- 
ries, as Fox and Erskine, expressed for him, are 



18 WINTER. 

refreshing to read in these unheroic days. His 
behavior in the field and in council and his dig- 
nified and contented withdrawal to private life 
were great. He could advance and he could 
withdraw. 

Dec. 25, 1841. It seems as if Nature did for 
a long time gently overlook the profanity of 
man. The wood still kindly echoes the strokes 
of the axe, and when the strokes are few and 
seldom, they add a new charm to a walk. All 
the elements strive to naturalize the sound. . . . 
y~~ It is not a true apology for any coarseness to 
say that it is natural. The grim woods can 
afford to be very delicate and perfect in the 
details. 

I don't want to feel as if my life were a so- 
journ any longer. That philosophy cannot be 
true which so paints it. It is time now that I 
begin to live. 
(/" Dec. 25, 1851. ... I go forth to see the sun 
set. Who knows how it will set even half an 
hour beforehand ? Whether it will go down in 
clouds or a clear sky ? . . . I witness a beauty 
in the form or coloring of the clouds which 
addresses itself to my imagination. It is what 
it suggests and is the symbol of that I care 
for, and if, by any trick of science, you rob it 
of this, you do me no service and explain noth- 
ing. I, standing twenty miles off, see a crim- 



WINTER. 19 

son cloud in the horizon. You tell me it is a 
mass of vapor which absorbs all other rays and 
reflects the red; but that is nothing to the pur- 
pose, for this red vision excites me, stirs my 
blood, makes my thoughts flow. I have new and 
indescribable fancies, and you have not touched 
the secret of that influence. If there is not 
something mystical in your explanation, ... it is 
quite insufficient. . . . What sort of science is 
that which enriches the understanding, but robs 
the imagination ? Not merely robs Peter to pay 
Paul, but takes from Peter more than it ever 
gives to Paul. That is simply the way in which 
it speaks to the understanding, . . . but that is 
not the way it speaks to the imagination. . . . 
Just as inadequate to a mere mechanic would be 
a poet's account of a steam-engine. If we knew 
all things thus mechanically merely, should we 
know anything really ? — It would be a true dis- 
cipline for the writer to take the least film of 
thought that floats in the twilight sky of his 
mind for his theme, about which he has scarcely 
one idea (that would be teaching his ideas how 
to shoot), make a lecture on this, by assiduity 
and attention get perchance two views of the 
same, increase a little the stock of knowledge, 
clear a new field instead of manuring the old. . . . 
We seek too soon to ally the perceptions of the 
mind to the experience of the hand, to prove 



20 WINTER. 

our gossamer truths practical, to show their con- 
nection with every-day life (better show their 
distance from every-day life), to relate them to 
the cider mill and the banking institution. . . . 
That way of viewing things you know of, least 
insisted on by you however, least remembered, 
take that view, adhere to that, insist on that ; see 
all things from that point of view. Will you 
let these intimations go unattended to, and watch 
the door bell or knocker ? . . . Do not speak for 
other men ; think for yourself. You are shown 
as in a vision the kingdoms of this world, and of 
all the worlds, but you prefer to look in upon a 
puppet show. Though you should speak but to 
one kindred mind in all time, though you should 
not speak to one, but only utter aloud, that you 
may the more completely realize and live in, 
the idea which contains the reason of your life, 
that you may build yourself up to the height of 
your conceptions, that you may remember your 
creator in the days of your youth, and justify 
his ways to man, that the end of life may not 
be its amusement. 

Dec. 25, 1853. p. m. Skated to Fair Haven 
and above. . . . About 4 P. M. the sun sank be- 
hind a cloud and the pond began to whoop or 
boom. I noticed the same yesterday at the same 
hour on Flint's. It was perfectly silent before. 
The weather in both cases clear, cold, and windy. 



WINTER. 21 

It is a sort of belching, and as C. said, somewhat 
frog-like. I suspect it did not continue to whoop 
long either night. It is a very pleasing phenom- 
enon, so dependent on the attitude of the sun. 

When I go to Boston, I go naturally straight 
through the city down to the end of Long 
Wharf and look off, for I have no cousins in the 
back alleys. The water and the vessels are 
novel and interesting. What are our maritime 
cities but the shops and dwellings of merchants 
about a wharf projecting into the sea where 
there is a convenient harbor, on which to land 
the produce of other climes, and at which to load 
the exports of your own. Next in interest to me 
is the market where the produce of our own 
country is collected. Boston, New York, Phila- 
delphia, Charleston, New Orleans, and many 
others are the names of wharves projecting into 
the sea. They are good places to take in or 
to discharge a cargo. I see a great many bar- 
rels and fig drums, and piles of wood for um- 
brella sticks, and blocks of granite and ice, etc., 
and that is Boston. Great piles of goods, and 
the means of packing and conveying them, much 
wrapping paper and twine, many crates and 
hogsheads and trucks, that is Boston. The more 
barrels, the more Boston. The museums and 
scientific societies and libraries are accidental. 
They gather around the barrels to save carting. 



22 WINTER. 

Apparently the ice is held down on the sides 
of the river by being frozen to the shore and the 
weeds, and so is overflowed there; but in the 
middle it is lifted up and makes room for the 
tide. 

I saw just above Fair Haven Pond two or 
three places where just before the last freezing, 
when the ice was softened and partly covered 
with sleet, there had been a narrow canal about 
eight inches wide quite across the river from 
meadow to meadow. I am constrained to be- 
lieve, from the peculiar character of it on the 
meadow end, where in one case it divided and 
crossed itself, that it was made either by musk- 
rats or otters or minks repeatedly crossing there. 
One end was, for some distance, like an otter 
trail in the soft upper part of the ice, not worn 
through. 

Dec. 25, 1856. p. m. To Lee's Cliff. A 
strong wind from the N. W. is gathering the 
snow into picturesque drifts behind the walls. 
As usual, they resemble shells more than any- 
thing else, sometimes the prows of vessels, also 
the folds of a white napkin or counterpane 
dropped over a bonneted head. There are no 
such picturesque snowdrifts as are formed be- 
hind loose and open stone walls. . . . 

Take long walks in stormy weather, or through 
deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would 



WINTER. 23 

keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. 
Be cold and hungry and weary. 

Dec. 25, 1858. . . . Now that the sun is set- 
ting, all its light seems to glance over the snow- 
clad pond [Walden], and strike the rocky shore 
under the pitch pines at the N. E. end. Though 
the bare, rocky shore there is only a foot or a 
foot and a half high, as I look, it reflects so 
much light that the rocks are singularly distinct, 
as if the pond showed its teeth. . . . How full 
of soft, pure light the western sky now, after 
sunset ! I love to see the outlines of the pines 
against it. Unless you watch, you do not know 
when the sun goes down. It is like a candle ex- 
tinguished without smoke. A moment ago you 
saw that glittering orb amid the dry oak leaves 
in the horizon and now you can detect no trace 
of it. . . . 

But for all voice in that serene hour, I hear 
an owl hoot. How glad I am to hear him 
rather than the most eloquent man of the age. 

Dec. 25, 1859. How different are men and 
women, e. g., in respect to the adornment of 
their heads. Do you ever see an old or jammed 
bonnet on the head of a woman at a public meet- 
ing? But look at any assembly of men with 
their hats on; how large a proportion of the 
hats will be old, weather-beaten, and indented; 
but, I think, so much more picturesque and in- 



24 WINTER. 

teresting. One farmer rides by my door in a 
hat which it does me good to see, there is so much 
character in it, so much independence, to begin 
with, and then affection for his old friends, etc., 
etc. I should not wonder if there were lichens 
on it. Think of painting a hero in a brand-new 
hat ! The chief recommendation of the Kossuth 
hat is that it looks old to start with, and almost 
as good as new to end with. Indeed, it is gen- 
erally conceded that a man does not look the 
worse for a somewhat dilapidated hat. But go 
to a lyceum and look at the bonnets and various 
other head gear of the women and girls (who, 
by the way, keep their hats on, it being too dan- 
gerous and expensive to take them off), why, 
every one looks as fragile as a butterfly's wings, 
having just come out of a bandbox, as it will go 
into a bandbox again when the lyceum is over. 
Men wear their hats for use, women theirs for 
ornament. I have seen the greatest philosopher 
in the town with what the traders would call a 
"shocking bad hat" on, but the woman whose 
bonnet does not come up to the mark is at best 
a blue-stocking. The man is not particularly 
proud of his beaver and musquash, but the 
woman flaunts her ostrich and sable iu your face. 
I Ladies are in haste to dress as if it were cold or 
as if it were warm, though it may not yet be so, 
merely to display a new dress. { 



WINTER. 25 

Dec. 26, 1840. . . . When the pond is frozen 
I do not suspect the wealth under my feet. How 
many pickerel are poised on easy fin fathoms 
below the loaded wain. The revolution of the 
seasons must be a curious phenomenon to them. 
Now the sun and wind brush aside their curtain, 
and they see the heavens again. 

Sunday, Dec. 26, 1841. . . . When I hear 
this bell ring, I am carried back to years and 
Sabbaths when I was newer and more innocent, 
I fear, than now, and it seems to me as if there 
were a world within a world. Sin, I am sure, is 
not in overt acts, or indeed in acts of any kind, 
but is in proportion to the time which has come 
behind us, and displaced eternity, to the degree 
in which our elements are mixed with the ele- 
ments of the world. The whole duty of life is 
implied in the question, how to respire and as- 
pire both at once. 

Dec. 26, 1850. The pine woods seen from the 
hill-tops, now that the ground is covered with 
snow, are not green, but a dark brown, greenish 
brown, perhaps. You see dark patches of wood. 

Dec. 26, 1851. I observed this afternoon that 

when E H came home from sleddiEg 

wood and unyoked his oxen, they made a busi- 
ness of stretching and scratching themselves 
with their horns, rubbing themselves against 
the posts, and licking themselves in those parts 



26 WINTER. 

which the yoke had prevented their reaching all 
day. The human way in which they behaved af- 
fected me even pathetically. They were too se- 
rious to be glad that their day's work was done ; 
they had not spirits enough left for that. They 
behaved as a tired wood-chopper might. This 
was to me a new phase in the life of the laboring 
ox. It is painful to think how they may some- 
times be overworked. 

Dec. 26, 1853. This forenoon it snowed pretty 
hard for some hours, the first snow of any conse- 
quence thus far. It is about three inches deep. 
I go out at 2\ p. m. just as it ceases. Now is 
the time before the wind rises, or the sun has 
shone, to go forth and see the snow on the trees. 
The clouds have lifted somewhat, but are still 
spitting snow a little. The vapor of the steam- 
engine does not rise high in the misty air. . . . 
The snow has fallen so gently that it forms an 
upright wall on the slenderest twig. The agree- 
able maze which the branches make is more ob- 
vious than ever, and every twig thus laden is as 
still as the hillside itself. The pitch pines are 
covered with soft globular masses. The effect 
of the snow is to press down the forest, con- 
found it with the grasses, and create a new sur- 
face to the earth above, shutting us in with it, 
and we go along somewhat like moles through 
our galleries. The sight of the pure and track- 



WINTER. 27 

less road up Brister's Hill, with branches and 
trees supporting snowy burdens bending over it 
on each side, would tempt us to begin life again. 
The ice is covered up and skating gone. The 
bare hills are so white that I cannot see their 
outlines against the misty sky. The snow lies 
handsomely on the shrub-oaks, like a coarse 
braiding in the air. They have so many small 
and zigzag twigs that it comes near to filling up 
with a light snow to that depth. The hunters 
are already out with dogs to follow the first 
beast that makes a track. — Saw a small flock 
of tree sparrows in the sproutlands under Bart- 
lett's Cliff. Their metallic chip is much like the 
lisp of the chickadee. — All weeds with their 
seeds rising dark above the snow are now re- 
markably conspicuous, which before were not ob- 
served against the dark earth. — I passed by 
the pitch pine that was struck by lightning, and 
was impressed with awe on looking up and seeing 
that broad, distinct, spiral mark, more distinct 
even than when made eight years ago, as one 
might groove a walking stick, . . . mark where 
a terrific and resistless bolt came down from 
heaven, out of the harmless sky, eight years ago. 
It seemed a sacred spot. I felt that we had not 
learned much since the days of Tullus Hostilius. 
The tree at length shows the effect of the shock, 
and the woodpeckers have begun to bore it on 
one side. 



28 WINTER. 

Walden still open. Saw in it a small diver, 
probably a grebe or dobchick, dipper or what 
not, with the markings, so far as I saw, of the 
crested grebe, but smaller. It had a black head, 
a white ring about its neck, a white breast, black 
back, and apparently no tail. It dived and 
swam a few rods under water, and when on the 
surface kept turning round and round warily, 
nodding its head the while. This is the only 
pond hereabouts that is open. 

Was overtaken by an Irishman seeking work. 
I asked him if he could chop wood. He said he 
was not long in this country, that he could cut 
one side of a tree well enough, but he had not 
learned to change hands and cut the other, with- 
out going round it, what we call crossing the calf. 
They get very small wages at this season of the 
year, almost give up the ghost in the effort to 
keep soul and body together. He left me on 
the run to find a new master. 

Dec. 26, 1854. At R 's [New Bedford]. 

I do not remember to have ever seen such a day 
as this in Concord. There is no snow here 
(though there has been excellent sleighing at 
Concord since the 5th), but it is very muddy, 
the frost coming out of the ground as in spring 
with us. 

I went to walk in the woods with R. It was 
wonderfully warm and pleasant. The cockerels 



WINTER. 29 

crowed just as in a spring day at home. I felt 
the winter breaking up in me, and if I had been 
at home, I should have tried to write poetry. 
They told me that this was not a rare day there, 
that they had little or no winter such as we have, 
and it was owing to the influence of the Gulf 
Stream which was only sixty miles from Nan- 
tucket at the nearest, or one hundred and twenty 
miles from them. In mid- winter when the wind 
was S. E. or even S. W., they frequently had days 
as warm and debilitating as in summer. There is 
a difference of about a degree in latitude between 
Concord and New Bedford, but far more in cli- 
mate. The American holly is quite common 
there, with its red berries still holding on, and is 
now their Christmas evergreen. I heard the 
larks sing strong and sweet, and saw robins. . . . 
R. said that pheasants from England (where 
they are not indigenous) had been imported into 
Naushon and are now killed there. 

Dec. 26, 1855. After snow, rain, and hail 
yesterday and last night, we have this morning 
quite a glaze, there being at least an inch or two 
of crusted snow on the ground ; the most we 
have had. The sun comes out at 9 A. M. and 
lights up the ice-incrusted trees. ... I go to 
Walden via the almshouse and up the railroad. 
Trees seen in the west against the dark cloud, 
the sun shining on them, are perfectly white as 



1 



30 WINTER. 

frost work, and their outlines very perfectly and 
distinctly revealed, great wisps that they are and 
ghosts of trees, with recurved twigs. The walls 
and fences are incased, and the fields bristle 
with a myriad of crystal spears. Already the 
wind is rising and a brattling is heard overhead 
in the street. The sun shining down a gorge 
over the woods at Brister's Hill reveals a won- 
derfully brilliant, as well as seemingly solid and 
diversified region in the air. The ice is from an 
eighth to a quarter of an inch thick about the 
twigs and pine needles, only one half as thick 
commonly on one side. The heads of the trees 
A are bowed, and their plumes and needles stiff as 
»| j if preserved under glass for the inspection of 
' posterity. . . . The pines thus weighed down 
are sharp-pointed at top, and remind me of firs 
and even hemlocks, their drooping boughs being 
wrapped about them like the folds of a cloak or 
a shawl. The crust is already strewn with bits 
of the green needles which have been broken off. 
Frequently the whole top stands up bare, while 
the middle and lower branches are drooping and 
massed together, resting on one another. — But 
the low and spreading weeds in the fields and 
the woodpaths are the most interesting. Here 
are asters (savory-leaved), whose flat, imbricated 
calyxes, three quarters of an inch over, are sur- 
mounted and inclosed in a perfectly transparent 



WINTER. 31 

ice button, like a glass knob, through which you 
see the reflections of the brown calyx. These are 
very common. — Each little blue curl calyx has a 
spherical button, like those over a little boy's 
jacket, little sprigs of them, and the pennyroyal 
has still smaller spheres more regularly arranged 
about its stem, chandelier- wise, and still smells 
through the ice. The finest grasses support the 
most wonderful burdens of ice and most bunched 
on their minute threads. These weeds are spread 
and arched over into the snow again, countless 
little arches a few inches high, each cased in ice, 
which you break with a tinkling crash at each 
step. — The scarlet fruit of the cockspur lichen, 
seen glowing through the more opaque whitish 
or snowy crust of a stump, is, on close inspection, 
the richest sight of all, for the scarlet is in- 
creased and multiplied by reflection through the 
bubbles and hemispherical surfaces of the crust, 
as if it covered some vermilion grain thickly 
strewn. The brown cup lichens stand in their 
midst. The whole rough bark, too, is incased. 

Already a squirrel has perforated the crust 
above the mouth of his burrow here and there, 
by the side of the path, and left some empty 
acorn shells on the snow. He has shoveled out 
this morning before the snow has frozen on his 
doorstep. . . . 

Particularly are we attracted in the winter by 



32 WINTER. 

greenness and signs of growth, as the green and 
white shoots of grass and weeds pulled, or float- 
ing on the water, and also by color, as the cock- 
spur lichens, crimson birds, etc. 

4 p. M. Up railroad. Since the sun has risen 
higher and fairly triumphed over the clouds, the 
ice has glistened with all the prismatic hues. . . . 
The whole top of the pine forest, as seen miles 
off: in the horizon, is of sharp points, the leading 
shoots with a few plumes. 

In a true history or biography, of how little 
consequence those events of which so much is 
commonly made. ... I find in my journal that 
the most important events in my life, if recorded 
at all, are not dated. 

Dec. 26, 1858. p. M. To Jenny Dugan's. 
. . . Call at a farmer's this Sunday p. M., where 
I surprise the well-to-do masters of the house, 
lounging in very ragged clothes, for which they 
think it necessary to apologize, and one of them 
is busy laying the supper table (at which he 
invites me to sit down at last), bringing up cold 
meat from the cellar and a lump of butter on 
the end of his knife, and making the tea by the 
time his mother gets home from church. Thus 
sincere and homely, as I am glad to know, is the 
actual life of these New England men, wearing 
rags indoors there which would disgrace a beg- 
gar (and are not beggars and paupers they who 



WINTER. 33 

could be disgraced so), and doing the indispen- 
sable work, however humble. How much better 
and more humane it was than if they had im- 
ported and set up among their penates a headless 
torso from the ruins of Ireland ! I am glad to 
find that our New England life has a genuine, 
humane core to it ; that inside, after all, there 
is so little pretense and brag. . . . Xhe middle- 
aged son sits there in the old unpainted house 
in a ragged coat, and helps his old mother about 
her work when the field does not require him. 

Bee. 26, 1859. p. m. Skate to Lee's Bridge. 
... I see a brute with a gun in his hand stand- 
ing motionless over a muskrat's house which he 
has destroyed. I find that he has visited every one 
in the neighborhood of Fair Haven Pond, above 
and below, and broken them all down, laying open 
the interior to the water, and then stood watchful 
close by for the poor creature to show its head 
for a breath of air. There lies the red carcass 
of one whose pelt he has taken on the spot, 
. . . and for his afternoon's cruelty that fellow 
will be rewarded with ninepence, perchance. 
When I consider the opportunities of the civil- 
ized man for getting ninepences and getting 
light, this seems to me more savage than savages 
are. Depend on it that whoever thus treats the 
muskrat's house, his refuge when the water is 
frozen thick, he and his family will not come to 



34 WINTER. 

a good end. So many of these houses being 
broken open, twenty or thirty I see, I look into 
the open hole, and find in it, in almost every in- 
stance, many pieces of the white root, with -the 
little leaf bud curled up, which I take to be the 
yellow lily root. The leaf bud unrolled has the 
same scent as the yellow lily. There will be 
a half dozen of these pointed buds, more or 
less green, coming to a point at the end of the 
root. Also I see a little coarser, what I take to 
be the green leaf stalk of the pontederia, for I 
see a little of the stipule sheathing the stalk from 
within it (?) ... In one hole there was a large 
quantity of the root I have mentioned, its leaf 
buds attached or bitten off. The root was gen- 
erally five or six eighths of an inch in diameter. 
It must, I think, be the principal food of the 
muskrat at this time. If you open twenty cab- 
ins you will find it in at least three quarters of 
them, and nothing else unless a very little pon- 
tederia leaf stem (?). By eating, or killing at 
least, so many lily buds, they must thin out the 
plant considerably. — I saw no fresh clam shells 
in the holes and scarcely any on the ice anywhere 
on the edge of open places, nor are they proba- 
bly deposited in a heap under the ice. It may 
be, however, that the shells are opened in the 
hole, and then dropped in the water near by. 
Twice this winter I have noticed a muskrat 



WINTER. 35 

floating in a placid, smooth, open place in the 
river, when it was frozen for a mile each side, 
looking at first like a bit of stump or frozen 
meadow, but showing its whole upper outline 
ironi nose to end of tail, perfectly still till he ob- 
served me, then suddenly diving and steering 
under the ice toward some cabin's entrance or 
other retreat half-a-dozen or more rods off. 

As some of the tales of our childhood, the in- 
ventions of some Mother Goose, will haunt us 
when we are grown up, so the race itself still 
believes in some of the fables with which its in- 
fancy has amused and imposed on it, e. #., the 
fable of the Cranes and Pygmies which learned 
men endeavored to believe or explain in the last 
century. 

Aristotle being almost, if not quite, the first 
to write systematically on animals, gives them 
of course only popular names, such as were com- 
mon with the hunters, fowlers, fishers, and farm- 
ers of his day. He used no scientific terms. 
But he having the priority, and having, as it 
were, created science, and given it its laws, those 
popular Greek names, even when the animal to 
which they were applied cannot be identified, 
have been in great part preserved, and make the 
learned, far-fetched, and commonly unintelligi- 
ble names of genera to-day, e. g., oXoOovptov, etc. 
His " History of Animals " has thus become a 
very storehouse of scientific nomenclature. 



36 WINTER. 

Dec. 26, 1860. M sent to me yesterday 

a perfect Strix Asio, or red owl of Wilson, not 
at all gray. This is now generally made the 
same with the Ncevia, but while some consider 
the red the old, others consider it the young. 
This is, as Wilson says, a bright " nut-brown." 
... It is twenty-three inches alar extent by 
about eleven long. Feet extend one inch be- 
yond tail. Cabot makes the old bird red, Au- 
dubon, the young. 

To such an excess have our civilization and 
division of labor come that A., a professional 
huckleberry picker, has hired B.'s field, and we 
will suppose is now gathering the crop, perhaps 
with the aid of a patented machine. C, a pro- 
fessed cook, is superintending the cooking of 
a pudding made of some of the berries, while 
Professor D., for whom the pudding is intended, 
sits in his library writing a book, a work on the 
Vaccinieae, of course. And now the result of 
this downward course will be seen in that book, 
which should be the ultimate fruit of the huckle- 
berry field, and account for the existence of the 
two professors who come between D. and A. It 
will be worthless. There will be none of the 
spirit of the huckleberry in it. The reading of 
it will be a weariness to the flesh. To use a 
homely illustration, it is to save at the spile, and 
waste at the bung. I believe in a different kind 



WINTER. 37 

of division of labor, and that Professor D. should 
divide himself between the library and the 
huckleberry field. 

Dec. 27, 1837. ... The real heroes of min- 
strelsy have been ideal, even when the names of 
actual heroes have been perpetuated. The real 
Arthur, who " not only excelled the experienced 
past, but also the possible future," of whom it 
was affirmed, after many centuries, that he was 
not dead, but " had withdrawn from the world 
into some magical region from which at a future 
crisis he was to reappear, and lead the Cymri 
in triumph through the island," whose character 
and actions were the theme of the bards of Bre- 
tagne, and the foundation of their interminable 
romances, was only an ideal impersonation. — 
Men claim for the ideal an actual existence also, 
but do not often expand the actual into the 
ideal. " If you do not believe me, go into Bre- 
tagne, and mention in the streets and villages 
that Arthur is really dead like other men. 
You will not escape with impunity. You will 
be either hooted with the curses of your hearers, 
or stoned to death." 

The most remarkable instance of home-sick- 
ness is that of the colony of Franks transplanted 
by the Romans from the German Ocean to the 
Euxine, who, at length resolving to a man to 
abandon the country, seized the vessels which 



38 WINTER. 

carried them out, and reached at last their 
native shores, after innumerable difficulties and 
dangers upon the Mediterranean and the At- 
lantic. 

Dec. 27, 1851. Sunset from Fair Haven 
Hill. This evening there are many clouds in 
the west into which the sun goes down, so that 
we have our visible or apparent sunset and red 
evening sky as much as fifteen minutes before 
the real sunset. You must be early on the hills 
to witness such a sunset, — by half -past four at 
least. Then all the vales, even to the horizon, 
are full of a purple vapor which half veils the 
distant mountains, and the windows of undiscov- 
erable farm-houses shine like an early candle or 
a fire. After the sun has gone behind a cloud, 
there appears to be a gathering of clouds around 
his setting, and for a few moments his light in 
the amber sky seems more intense, brighter, and 
purer than at noonday, . . . like the ecstasy which 
we are told sometimes lights up the face of a 
dying man. That is a serene or evening death, 
like the end of the day. Then at last through 
all the grossness which has accumulated in the 
atmosphere of day is seen a patch of serene sky, 
fairer by contrast with the surrounding dark than 
midday, and even the gross atmosphere of the 
day is gilded and made pure as amber by the 
setting sun, as if the day's sins were forgiven it. 



WINTER. 39 

The man is blessed who every day is permitted 
to behold anything so pure and serene as the 
western sky at sunset, while revolutions vex the 
world. 

There is no winter necessarily in the sky, 
though snow covers the earth. The sky is al- 
ways ready to answer our moods. We can see 
summer there or winter. 

Dec. 27, 1852. Not a particle of ice in Wal- 
den to-day. Paddled across it, and took my new 
boat out. A black and white duck on it. 
Flint's and Fair Haven frozen up. Ground 
bare. River open. 

Dec. 27, 1853. High wind with more snow 
in the night. . . . Snowy ridges cross the vil- 
lage street, and make it look as wild and bleak 
as a pass of the Rocky Mountains, or the Sierra 
Nevada. 

p. M. To Fair Haven Pond, up meadows 
and river. The snow blows like spray fifteen 
feet high across the fields, while the wind roars 
in the trees as in the rigging of a vessel. It is 
altogether like the ocean in a storm. . . . 

It is surprising what things the snow betrays. 
I had not seen a meadow -mouse all summer, 
but no sooner does the snow come and spread its 
mantle over the earth than it is printed with 
the tracks of countless mice and larger animals. 
I see where the mouse has dived into a little 



40 WINTER. 

hole in the snow not larger than my thumb by 
the side of a weed, and a yard farther reap- 
peared, and so on alternately above and beneath. 
A snug life it lives. — The crows come nearer 
to the houses, alight on trees by the roadside, ap- 
parently being put to it for food. . . . 

It is a true winter sunset, almost cloudless, 
clear, cold, indigo-like, along the horizon. The 
evening (?) star is seen shining brightly before 
the twilight has begun. A rosy tint suffuses 
the eastern horizon. The outline of the moun- 
tains is wonderfully distinct and hard. They 
are a dark blue and very near. Wachusett looks 
like a right-whale over our bow, plowing the 
continent, with his flukes well down. He has a 
vicious look, as if he had a harpoon in him. 

I wish I could buy at the shops some kind of 
India rubber that would rub out at once all 
that in my writing which it costs me so many 
perusals, so many months, if not years, and so 
much reluctance, to erase. 

Dec. 27, 1857. . . . Walden is almost en- 
tirely skimmed over. It will probably be com- 
pletely frozen over to-night. 

I frequently hear a dog bark at some distance 
in the night, which, strange as it may seem, 
reminds me of the cooing or crowing of a ring- 
dove which I heard every night a year ago at 
Perth Amboy. It was sure to coo on the slightest 



WINTER. 41 

noise in the house, as good as a watch-dog. The 
crowing of cocks too reminds me of it, and now 
I think of it, it had precisely the intonation and 
accent of the cat-owl's ho6 hoo-hoo-o-o, in each 
case, a sonorous dwelling on the last syllable. 

They get the pitch and break ground with the 
first note, and then prolong and swell it in the 
last. 

The commonest and cheapest sounds, as the 
barking of a dog, produce the same effect on 
fresh and healthy ears that the rarest music does. 
It depends on your appetite for sound. Just as 
a crust is sweeter to a healthy appetite than 
confectionery to a pampered or diseased one. 
It is better that these cheap sounds be music to 
us than that we have the rarest ears for music 
in any other sense. I have lain awake at night 
many a time to think of the barking of a dog 
which I had heard long before, bathing my 
being again in those waves of sound, as a fre- 
quenter of the opera might lie awake remember- 
ing the music he had heard. 

As my mother made my pockets once of fa- 
ther's old fire bags, with the date of the forma- 
tion of the society on them, 1794 (though they 
made but rotten pockets), so we put our mean- 
ing into those old mythologies. I am sure that 
the Greeks were commonly innocent of any such 
double entendre as we attribute to them. 



42 WINTER. 

One while we do not wonder that so many 
commit suicide, life is so barren and worthless. 
We only live on by an effort of the will. Sud- 
denly our condition is ameliorated, and even the 
barking of a dog is a pleasure to us. So closely 
is our happiness bound up with our physical 
condition, and one reacts on the other. 

Do not despair of your life. You have no 
doubt force enough to overcome your obstacles. 
Think of the fox prowling through wood and 
field in a winter night for something to satisfy 
his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and the 
hounds and traps, his race survives. I do not 
believe any of them ever committed suicide. I 
saw this afternoon where probably a fox had 
rolled some small carcass in the snow. 

I am disappointed by most essays and lec- 
tures. I find that I had expected the authors 
would have some life, some very private expe- 
rience to report, which would make it compara- 
tively unimportant in what style they expressed 
themselves, but commonly they have only a 
talent to exhibit. The new magazines which all 
had been expecting may contain only another 
love story, as naturally told as the last, per- 
chance, but without the slightest novelty in it. 
It may be a mere vehicle for Yankee phrases. 

What interesting contrasts our climate affords. 
In July you rush panting into the pond to cool 



WINTER. 43 

yourself in the tepid water, when the stones on 
the bank are so heated that you cannot hold one 
tightly in your hand, and horses are melting on 
the road. — Now you walk on the same pond 
frozen, amid the snow, with numbed fingers and 
feet, and see the water target bleached and stiff 
in the ice. 
/^Bec. 27, 1858. Talk of Fate! How little i- 
one can know what is fated to another ! What 
he can do and what he cannot do. I doubt 
whether one can give or receive any very perti- 
nent advice. In all important crises, one can 
only consult his genius. Though he were the 
most shiftless and craziest of mortals, if he still 
recognizes that he has any genius to consult, 
none may presume to go between him and her. * 
They, methinks, are poor stuff and creatures of 
a miserable fate who can be advised and per- 
suaded* in very important steps. Show me a 
man who consults his genius, and you have 
shown me a man who cannot be advised. You 
may know what a thing costs or is worth to you, 
you can never know what it costs or is worth to 
me. All the community may scream because 
one man is born who will not conform, because 
conformity to him is death. He is so consti- 
tuted. They know nothing about his case, they 
are fools when they presume to advise him. The 
man of genius knows what he is aiming at. 



44 WINTER. 

Nobody else knows, and he alone knows when 
something comes between him and his object. 
In the course of generations, however, men will 
excuse you for not doing as they do, if you will 
bring enough to pass in your own way. /— 

Dec. 28, 1840. The snow hangs on the trees 
as the fruit of the season. In those twigs 
which the wind has preserved naked there is a 
warmer green for the contrast. The whole tree 
exhibits a kind of interior and household com- 
fort, a sheltered and covert aspect. It has the 
snug inviting look of a cottage on the moors, 
buried in snow. — Our voices ring hollowly 
through the woods as through a chamber, the 
twigs crackle under foot with private and house- 
hold echoes. I have observed on a clear winter's 
morning that the woods have their southern win- 
dow as well as the house, through which the 
first beams of the sun stream along their aisles 
and corridors. The sun goes up swiftly behind 
the limbs of the white pine, as the sashes of a 
window. 

Dec. 28, 1852. . . . Both for bodily and 
mental health court the present. Embrace 
health wherever you find her. . . . 
/ It is worth while to apply what wisdom one 
nias to the conduct of his life, surely. I find my- 
self oftenest wise in little things and foolish in 
great ones. That I may accomplish some petty, 



WINTER. 45 

particular affair well, I live my whole life 
coarsely. A broad margin of leisure is as beau- 
tiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes 
waste no less in life than in housekeeping. 
Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, 
not of the cars. What are threescore years and 
ten hurriedly and coarsely lived to moments of 
divine leisure, in which your life is coincident 
with the life of the universe. We live too fast 
and coarsely, just as we eat too fast, and do not 
know the true savor of our food. We consult 
our will and our understanding and the expecta- 
tion of men, not our genius. I can impose upon 
myself tasks which will crush me for life and pre- 
vent all expansion, and this I am but too inclined 
to do. Our moment of life costs many hours, 
hours not of business, but of preparation and 
invitation. Yet the man who does not betake 
himself at once and desperately to sawing is 
called a loafer, though he may be knocking at 
the doors of heaven all the while, which shall 
surely be opened to him. That aim in life is 
highest which requires the highest and finest 
discipline. How much, what infinite leisure it 
requires, as of a life-time, to appreciate a single 
phenomenon! You must camp down beside it 
as for life, having reached your land of promise, 
and give yourself wholly to it. It must stand 
for the whole world to you, symbolical of all 



46 WINTER. 

things. The least partialness is your own defect 
of sight, and cheapens the experience fatally. 
Unless the humming of a gnat is as the music 
of the spheres, and the music of the spheres is as 
the humming of a gnat, they are naught to me. 
It is not communications to serve for a history 
(which are science), but the great story itself, 
that cheers and satisfies us. 

Dec. 28, 1853. ... I hear and see tree spar- 
rows about the weeds in the garden. They 
seem to visit the gardens with the earliest snow, 
or is it that they are more obvious against the 
white ground. By their sharp, silvery chip, per- 
chance, they inform each other of their where- 
abouts and keep together. 

Dec. 28, 1854. [Nantucket.] A misty rain 
as yesterday. Captain Gardiner carried me to 
Siasconset in his carriage. . . . He is exten- 
sively engaged in raising pines on the island. 
There is not a tree to be seen except such as are 
set out about houses. . . . He showed me sev- 
eral lots of his of different sizes, one tract of 
three hundred acres sown in rows with a planter, 
where the young trees, two years old, were 
just beginning to green the ground, and I saw 
one of Norway pine and our pitch, mixed, eight 
years old, which looked quite like a forest at a 
distance. The Norway pines had grown the 
faster, with a longer shoot, and had a bluer look 



WINTER. 47 

at a distance, more like the white pine The 
common pitch pines have a reddish crisped look 
at top. Some are sown in rows, some broad- 
cast. At first Captain Gardiner was alarmed 
to find that the ground moles had gone along in 
the furrows directly under the plants and so in- 
jured the roots as to kill many of the trees, and 
he sowed over again. He was also discouraged 
to find that a sort of spindle worm had killed 
the leading shoot of a great part of his neigh- 
bor's older trees. These plantations must very 
soon change the aspect of the island. His com- 
mon pitch pine seed obtained from the Cape 
cost him about twenty dollars a bushel ; at least 
about a dollar a quart with the wings ; and they 
told him it took about eighty bushels of cones to 
make one such bushel of seeds. I was surprised 
to find that the Norway pine seed without the 
wings imported from France had cost not quite 
two dollars a bushel delivered at New York or 
Philadelphia. He has ordered eight hogsheads 
of the best, clear wingless seeds, at this rate. I 
think he said it took about a gallon to sow an 
acre. He had tried to get white pine seed, but 
in vain. The cones had not contained any of 
late. (?) This looks as if he meant to sow a good 
part of the island, though he said he might sell 
some of the seed. It is an interesting enterprise. 
. . . This island must look exactly like a prairie, 



48 WINTER. 

except that the view in clear weather is bounded 
by the sea. — Saw crows and robins, also saw and 
heard larks frequently, but most abundant run- 
ning along the ruts or circling about just over 
the ground in small flocks, what the inhabitants 
call snow-birds, a gray, bunting-like bird about 
the size of the snow-bunting. Can it be the sea- 
side finch, or the savannah sparrow, or the 
shore lark ? . . . A few years ago some one im- 
ported a dozen partridges from the main-land, 
but though some were seen for a year or two, 
not one had been seen for some time, and they 
were thought to be extinct. Captain Gardiner 
thought the raccoons, which had been very nu- 
merous, might have caught them. In Harrison 
days some coons were imported and turned loose. 
They multiplied very fast, and became quite a 
pest, killing hens, etc., and were killed in turn. 
Finally, people turned out and hunted them 
with hounds, and killed seventy-five at one time, 
since which he had not heard of any. There 
were foxes once, but none now, and no indige- 
ous animal bigger than a ground mole. . . . 

The last Indian, not of pure blood, died this 
very month, and I saw his picture with a basket 
of huckleberries in his hand. 

Dec. 28, 1856. I am surprised to see the 
Fringilla hyemalis here. [Walden.] . . . The 
fishermen sit by their damp fire of rotten pine 



WINTER. 49 

wood, so wet and chilly that even smoke in their 
eyes is a kind of comfort. There they sit, ever 
and anon scanning their reels to see if any have 
fallen, and if not catching many fish, still getting 
what they went for, though they may not be 
aware of it, *. e., a wilder experience than the 
town affords. . . . 

I thrive best on solitude. If I have had a 
companion only one day in a week, unless it 
were one or two I could name, I find that the 
value of the week to me has been seriously 
affected. It dissipates my days, and often it 
takes me another week to get over it. As the 
Esquimaux of Smith's Strait in North Green- 
land laughed when Kane warned them of their 
utter extermination, cut off as they were by ice 
on all sides from the race, unless they attempted 
in season to cross the glacier southward, so do I 
laugh when you tell me of the danger of impov- 
erishing myself by isolation. It is here that the 
walrus and the seal, and the white bear, and the 
eider ducks and auks on which I batten, most 
abound. 

Dec. 28, 1858. p. m. To Walden. The 
earth is bare. I walk about the pond looking at 
the shores, since I have not paddled about it 
much of late years. What a grand place for a 
promenade ! . . . That rocky shore under the 
pitch pines, which so reflects the light, is only 



50 WINTER. 

three feet wide by one foot high, yet there 
even to-day the ice is melted close to the edge, 
and just off this shore the pickerel are most 
abundant. This is the warm and sunny side to 
which any one, man, bird, or quadruped, woidd 
soonest resort in cool weather. I noticed a few 
chickadees there in the edge of the pines in the 
sun, lisping and twittering cheerfully to one 
another with a reference to me, I think, the 
cunning and innocent little birds. One a little 
farther off utters the phcebe note. There is a 
foot, more or less, of clear, open water at the 
edge here, and seeing this, one of these birds 
hops down, as if glad to find any open water at 
this season, and after prinking, it stands in the 
water on a stone, up to its belly, and dips its 
head, and flirts the water about vigorously, 
giving itself a good washing. I had not ex- 
pected this at this season. No fear that it will 
catch cold. — The ice cracks suddenly with a 
shivering jar, like crockery or the brittlest mate- 
rial, such as it is, and I notice, as I sit here at 
this open edge, that each time the ice cracks, 
though it may be a good distance off toward the 
middle, the water here is very much agitated. 
The ice is about six inches thick. 

Dec. 29, 1840. As echo makes me enunci- 
ate distinctly, so the sympathy of a friend 
gives plainness and point to my speech. This 
is the advantage of letter- writing. 



WINTER. 51 

Dec. 29, 1841. . . . Whole weeks or months 
of my summer life slide away in thin volumes 
like mists or smoke, till at length some warm 
morning, perchance, I see a sheet of mist blown 
down the brook to the swamp, its shadow flitting 
across the fields which have caught a new signifi- 
cance from that accident, and as that vapor is 
raised above the earth, so shall the next weeks 
be elevated above the plane of the actual : or a 
like experience may come when the setting sun 
slants across the pastures, and the cows low to my 
inward ear, and only enhance the stillness, and 
the eve is as the dawn, a beginning hour and not 
a final one, as if it would never have done, with 
its clear, western amber, inciting men to lives of 
limpid purity. At evening, other parts of my 
work shine than I had thought at noon, and I 
discover the real purport of my toil as when the 
husbandman has reached the end of the furrow 
and looks back, he can best tell where the 
pressed earth shines most. . . . 

A man should go out of Nature with the chirp 
of the cricket or the trill of the veery singing 
in his ear. These earthly sounds should only 
die away for a season, as the strains of the harp 
rise and fall. Death is that expressive pause in 
the music of the blast. I would be as clean as 
ye, O Woods. I shall not rest till I am as inno- 
cent as you. I know that I shall sooner or later 



52 WINTER. 

attain to an unspotted innocence, for when I 
consider that state even now I am thrilled. 

If we were wise enough, we should see to 
what virtue we were indebted for any happier 
moment we might have. No doubt we had 
earned this at some time. 

These motions everywhere in Nature must 
surely be the circulations of God ; . . . the run- 
ning stream, the waving tree, the roving wind, 
whence else their infinite health and freedom. 
I can see nothing so holy as unrelaxed play and 
frolic in this bower God has built 1 for us. The 
suspicion of sin never comes to this experience. 
If men felt this they would never build temples 
even of marble or diamond (it would be sacri- 
lege and profane), but disport them forever in 
this paradise. . . . 
'yfvlt seems as if only one trait, one little inci- 
dent in human biography need to be said or 
written in some era, that all readers may go 
mad after it, and the man who did the miracle 
is made a demigod henceforth. — What we all 
do, not one can tell, and when some lucky 
speaker utters a truth of our experience and not 
of our speculation, we think he must have had 
the nine Muses and the three Graces to help 
him. 

Dec. 29, 1851. The sun just risen. The 
ground is almost entirely bare. ... It is warm as 



WINTER. 53 

an April morning. There is a sound of blue- 
birds in the air, and the cocks crow as in the 
spring. The steam curls up from the roofs and 
the ground. You walk with open cloak. It is 
exciting to behold the smooth, glassy surface of 
water where the melted snow has formed large 
puddles and ponds, and to see it running in the 
sluices. ... In the afternoon to Saw mill brook 
with W. E. C. . . . It feels as warm as in sum- 
mer. You sit on any fence rail and vegetate in 
the sun, and realize that the earth may produce 
peas again. Yet they say that this open and 
mild weather is unhealthy. That is always the 
way with them. How admirable it is that we 
can never foresee the weather, that it is always 
novel. Yesterday nobody dreamed of to-day. 
Nobody dreams of to-morrow. Hence the 
weather is ever the news. . . . This day yester- 
day was as incredible as any other miracle. 
Now all creatures feel it, even the cattle chew- 
ing stalks in the barn-yards, and perchance it 
has even penetrated to the lurking places of the 
crickets under the rocks. 

Dec. 29, 1853. ... A driving snow-storm 
all day, imprisoning most, stopping the cars, 
blocking up the roads. . . . The snow pene- 
trates through the smallest crevices about doors 
and windows. ... It is the worst snow-storm 
to bear that I remember. A strong wind from 



54 WINTER. 

the north blows the snow almost horizontally, 
and beside freezing you, almost takes your 
breath away. The driving snow blinds you, 
and when you are protected, you can see but a 
little way, it is so thick. Yet in spite of or on 
account of it all, I see the first flock of arctic 
snow-birds, Emberiza nivalis, near the depot, 
white and black, with a sharp whistle-like note. 
What a contrast between the village street 
now and as it was last summer ; the leafy elms 
then resounding with the warbling vireo, robins, 
bluebirds, the fiery hangbird, etc., to which the 
villagers, kept in doors by the heat, listened 
through open lattices. Now it is like a street in 
Nova Zembla, if they were to have any there. 
I wade to the post office as solitary a traveler as 
ordinarily in a wood-path in winter. The snow 
is mid-leg deep, while drifts as high as one's 
head are heaped against the houses and fences, 
and here and there range across the street like 
snowy mountains. . . . There is not a track 
leading from any door to indicate that the in- 
habitants have been forth to-day, any more than 
there is the track of any quadruped by the wood- 
paths. It is all pure, untrodden snow, banked 
up against the houses now at 4 p. m. ... In 
one place the drift covers the front yard fence, 
and stretches thence upward to the top of the 
front door, shutting all in. . , . Frequently the 



WINTER. 55 

snow lies banked up three or four feet high 
against the front doors, . . . there is a drift over 
each window, and the clapboards are all hoary 
with it. It is as if the inhabitants were all 
frozen to death, and now you threaded the deso- 
late streets, weeks after that calamity. There 
is not a sleigh or vehicle of any kind on the 
Milldam ; but one saddled horse on which a 
farmer has come into town. . . . Yet they are 
warmer, merrier than ever there within. At 
the post office they ask each traveler news of 
the cars, is there any train up or down, how 
deep the snow is on a level. 

Of the snow bunting, Wilson says that they 
appear in the northern parts of the United 
States " early in December, or with the first 
heavy snow, particularly if drifted by high 
winds." This day answers to that description 
exactly. The wind is northerly. He adds that, 
" they are universally considered as the harbin- 
gers of severe cold weather." They come down 
from the extreme north, and are common to the 
two continents. He quotes Pennant as saying 
that they "inhabit not only Greenland, but even 
the dreadful climate of Spitzbergen where veg- 
etation is nearly extinct, and scarcely any but 
cryptogamous plants are found. It therefore 
excites wonder how birds which are graminivor- 
ous in every other than those frost-bound regions 



56 WINTER. 

subsist ; yet are there found in great flocks, both 
on the land and ice of Spitzbergen." Pennant 
also says that they inhabit in summer " the most 
naked Lapland Alps," and " descend in rigor- 
ous seasons into Sweden, and fill the roads 
and fields," on which account the uplanders call 
them " hardwarsfogel" hard weather-birds ; he 
also says, " they overflow [in winter] the more 
southern counties in amazing multitudes." Wil- 
son says their colors are very variable, "and 
the whiteness of their plumage is observed to be 
greatest toward the depth of winter," He also 
says truly that they seldom sit long, " being a 
roving, restless bird." Peabody says that in 
summer they are " pure white and black," but 
are not seen of that color here. Those I saw 
to-day were of that color. . . . He says they 
are white and rusty brown here. These are the 
true winter birds for you, these winged snow- 
balls. I could hardly see them, the air was so 
full of driving snow. What hardy creatures ! 
Where do they spend the night ? . . . 

The farmer considers how much pork he has 
in his barrel, how much meal in his bin, how 
much wood in his shed. Each family, perchance, 
sends forth one representative before night, who 
makes his way with difficulty to the grocery or 
the post office to learn the news, i. e., to hear 
what others say to it, who can give the best ac- 



WINTER. 57 

count of it, best can name it, has waded farthest 
in it, has been farthest out, and can tell the big- 
gest and most adequate story, and hastens back 
with the news. . . . 

The thoughts and associations of summer and 
autumn are now as completely departed from our 
minds as the leaves are blown from the trees. 
Some withered deciduous ones are left to rus- 
tle, and our cold immortal evergreens. Some 
lichenous thoughts still adhere to us. 

Dec. 29, 1855. Down railroad to Androme- 
don Ponds. ... I see a shrike flying low be- 
neath the level of the railroad, which rises and 
alights on the topmost twig of an elm within 
four or five rods. All ash or bluish slate above, 
down to mid-wings, dirty white breast, and a 
broad black mark through eyes on side of head ; 
primaries (?) black, and some white appears 
when it flies. Most distinctive its small hooked 
bill (upper mandible). It makes no sound, but 
flits to the top of an oak farther off. Probably 
a male. 

Dec. 29, 1856. p. m. To Warren Miles's 
Mill. We must go out and re-ally ourselves to 
Nature every day. We must make root, send out 
some little fibre at least, even every winter day. 
I am sensible that I am imbibing health when I 
open my mouth to the wind. Staying in the 
house breeds a sort of insanity always. Every 



58 WINTER. 

house is, in this sense, a sort of hospital. A 
night and a forenoon is as much confinement to 
those wards as I can stand. I am aware that I 
recover some sanity, which I had lost, almost the 
instant that I come abroad. 

Dec. 29, 1858. p. m. Skate to Israel Kice's. 
I think more of skates than of the horse or loco- 
motive as annihilators of distance, for while I 
am getting along with the speed of the horse, I 
have at the same time the satisfactions of the 
horse and his rider, and far more adventure and 
variety than if I were riding. We never cease 
to be surprised when we see how swiftly the 
skater glides along. Just compare him with one 
walking or running. The walker is but a snail 
in comparison, and the runner gives up the con- 
test after a few rods. The skater can afford to 
follow all the windings of a stream, and yet soon 
leaves far behind and out of sight the walker 
who cuts across. Distance is hardly an obstacle 
to him. . . . The skater has wings, talaria to 
his feet. Moreover, you have such perfect con- 
trol of your feet that you can take advantage of 
the narrowest and most winding and sloping 
bridge of ice in order to pass between the but- 
ton bushes and the open stream, or under a 
bridge on a narrow shelf where the walker can- 
not go at all. You can glide securely within an 
inch of destruction on this, the most slippery of 



WINTER. 59 

surfaces, more securely than you could walk there 
perhaps on any other material. You can pursue 
swiftly the most intricate and winding path, 
even leaping obstacles that suddenly present 
themselves. . . . 

H H was fishing a quarter of a mile 

this side of Hubbard's Bridge. He had caught 
a pickerel . . . twenty-six inches long, ... a 
very handsome fish. Dark brown above, yel- 
low and brown on the side, becoming at length 
almost a clear golden yellow low down, with 
a white abdomen and reddish fins. They are 
handsome fellows, both the pikes in the water 
and the tigers in the jungle. What tragedies 
are enacted under this dumb, icy platform in 
the fields ! What an anxious and adventurous 
life the small fishes must live, liable at any 
moment to be swallowed by the larger. No fish 
of moderate size can go stealing along safely in 
any part of the stream but suddenly there may 
come rushing out from this jungle or that, some 
greedy monster and gulp him down. Parent 
fishes, if they care for their offspring, how can 
they trust them abroad out of their sight. 

It takes so many fishes a week to fill the 
maw of this large one. And the large ones! 

H H and company are lying in wait 

for them. 

Dec. 29, 1859. Very cold morning. About 



60 WINTER. 

15° — at 8 A. M. at our door. I went to the river 
immediately after sunrise ; could see a little 
greenness in the ice, and also a little rose color 
from the snow, but far less than before sunset. 
Do both these phenomena then require a gross 
atmosphere? Apparently the ice is greenest 
when the sun is twenty or thirty minutes above 
the horizon. 

From [a] smooth open place ... a great deal 
of vapor was rising, to the height of a dozen feet 
or more, as from a boiling kettle. This, then, is 
a phenomenon of quite cold weather. I did not 
notice it yesterday P. M. These open places are 
a sort of breathing holes of the river. . . . Just 
as cold weather reveals the breath of a man, still 
greater cold reveals the breath of, i. e., warm, 
moist air over the river. . . . p. M. . . . When 
I went to walk it was about 10° above zero, and 
when I returned 1° + . I did not notice any 
vapor rising from the open places as I did in the 
morning when it was 16° — and also when it was 
6° — . . . . When the air is, say 4° or 5° below 
zero, the water being 32°+, then there is a visi- 
ble evaporation. Is there the same difference, or 
some 40° between the heat of the human breath 
and that of the air in which the moisture in the 
breath becomes visible in vapor. This has to do 
with the dew point. — Next, what makes the 
water of those open places thus warm ? and is it 



WINTER. 61 

any warmer than elsewhere ? There is consider- 
able heat reflected from a sandy bottom where the 
water is shallow, and at these places it is always 
sandy and shallow, but I doubt if this actually 
makes the water warmer, though it may melt the 
more opaque ice which absorbs it. The fact that 
Holt bend, which is deep, is late to freeze, being 
narrow, seems to prove it to be the swiftness of 
the water, and not reflected heat that prevents 
freezing. The water is apparently kept warm 
under the ice and down next to the unfrozen 
earth, and by a myriad springs from within 
the bowels of the earth. 

Dec. 30, 1840. . . . Our Golden Age must 
after all be a pastoral one ; we would be simple 
men in ignorance, and not accomplished in wis- 
dom. We want great peasants more than great 
heroes. The sun would shine along the high- 
way to some purpose, if we would unlearn our 
wisdom and practice illiterate truth henceforth. 
. . . Let us grow to the full stature of our hum- 
bleness ere we aspire to be greater. — It is great 
praise in the poet [Virgil] to have made hus- 
bandry famous. 

11 In the cool spring 1 , when cool moisture from the hoary 

mountains flows, 
And the mouldering clod is dissolved hy the zephyr, 
Then straightway let the hull with deep-pressed plow "begin 
To groan, and the share, worn by the furrow, to shine." 

Georg. i. 43. 



62 WINTER. 

And again when the husbandman conducts 
water down the slope to restore his thirsty crops, 

" That, falling, makes a hoarse murmur among the smooth 
rocks, and tempers the parching fields with its hubhling 
streams."— Ibid. 109. 

Describing the end of the Golden Age and the 
commencement of the reign of Jupiter, he says : 

" He shook honey from the leaves, and removed fire, 

And stayed the wine everywhere flowing in rivers 

That experience, by meditating, might invent various arts 

By degrees, and seek the blade of corn in furrows, 

And strike out hidden fire from the veins of the flint." 

Ibid. 131. 

Dec. 30, 1841. . . . 

Within the circuit of this plodding life 

There are moments of an azure hue, 

... as unpolluted, fair, as is the violet 

Or anemone, when the spring strews them 

By some south wood side ; which make 

The best philosophy . . . untrue. 

... to console man for his grievance here, 

I have remembered, when the winter came, , 

High in my chamber, in the frosty nights, 

How, in the summer past, some 

Unrecorded beam, slanted across 

. . . [an] upland pasture where the Johnswort grew, 

Or heard, amidst the verdure of my mind, 

The bee's long smothered hum ; 

So, by the cheap economy of God, 

Made rich to go upon my wintry work again. 

When the snow is falling thick and fast, the 
flakes nearest you seem to be driving straight 
to the ground, while the more distant seem to 



WINTER. 63 

float in the air in a quivering bank, like feathers, 
or like birds at play, and not as if sent on any 
errand. So, at a little distance, all the works 
of nature proceed with sport and frolic. They 
are more in the eye, and less in the deed. 
^ Dec. 30, 1851. . . . This afternoon, being 
on Fair Haven Hill, I heard the sound of a 
saw, and soon after from the cliff saw two men 
sawing down a noble pine beneath, about forty 
rods off, . . . the last of a dozen or more which 
were left when the forest was cut, and for fifteen 
years have waved in solitary majesty over the 
sproutland. I saw them like beavers or insects 
gnawing at the trunk of this noble tree, the 
diminutive manikins with their cross-cut saw 
which could scarcely span it. It towered up a 
hundred feet, as I afterwards found by measure- 
ment, one of the tallest probably in the town- 
ship, and straight as an arrow, but slanting a 
little toward the hillside, its top seen against 
the frozen river and the hill of Conantum. I 
watch closely to see when it begins to move. Now 
the sawers stop, and with an axe open it a little 
on the side toward which it leans, that it may 
break the faster, and now their saw goes again. 
Now surely it is going ; it is inclined one quar- 
ter of the quadrant, and breathless I expect its 
crashing fall. But no, I was mistaken. It has 
not moved an inch. It stands at the same 



64 WINTER. 

angle as at first. It is fifteen minutes yet to its 
fall. Still its branches wave in the wind as if 
it were destined to stand for a century, and the 
wind soughs through its needles as of yore ; it 
is still a forest tree, the most majestic tree that 
waves over Musketaquid. The silvery sheen 
of the sunlight is reflected from its needles, it 
still affords an inaccessible crotch for the squir- 
rel's nest, not a lichen has forsaken its mast-like 
stem, its raking mast ; the hill is the hulk. Now, 
now is the moment, the manikins at its base 
are fleeing from their crime. They have 
dropped the guilty saw and axe. How slowly 
and majestically it starts, as if it were only 
swayed by a summer breeze, and would return 
without a sigh to its location in the air, and 
now it fans the hillside with its fall, and lies 
down to its bed in the valley from which it is 
never to rise, as softly as a feather, folding its 
green mantle about it like a warrior, as if, tired 
of standing, it embraced the earth with silent 
joy, returning its elements to the dust again. 
But, hark ! . . . you only saw, you did not 
hear. There now comes up a deafening crash 
to these rocks, advertising you that even trees 
do not die without a groan. ... I went down 
and measured it. It was four feet in diameter 
where it was sawed, and about a hundred feet 
long. Before I had reached it, the axemen had 



WINTER. 65 

already half divested it of its branches. Its 
gracefully spreading top was a perfect wreck on 
the hillside, as if it had been made of glass, and 
the tender cones of one year's growth upon its 
summit appealed in vain and too late to the 
mercy of the chopper. Already he has meas- 
ured it with his axe, and marked off the small 
logs it will make. It is lumber. . . . When the 
fish hawk in the spring revisits the banks of the 
Musketaquid, he will circle in vain to find his 
accustomed perch, and the hen hawk will mourn 
for the pines lofty enough to protect his brood. 
... I hear no knell tolled, I see no procession 
of mourners in the streets or the woodland 
aisles. The squirrel has leaped to another tree, 
the hawk has circled farther off, and has now 
settled upon a new eyrie, but the woodman is 
preparing to lay his axe at the root of that also. 
Dee. 30, 1853. In winter every man is, to 
a slight extent, dormant, just as some animals 
are but partially awake, though not commonly 
classed with those that hibernate. The summer 
circulations are to some extent stopped, the 
range of his afternoon walk is somewhat nar- 
rower, he is more or less confined to the high- 
way and woodpath ; the weather oftener shuts 
him up in his burrow, he begins to feel the 
access of dormancy, and to assume the spherical 
form of the marmot, the nights are longest, he 



66 WINTER. 

is often satisfied if he only gets to the post office 
in the course of the day. The arctic voyagers 
are obliged to invent and willfully engage in 
active amusements to keep themselves awake 
and alive. . . . Even our experience is some- 
thing like wintering in the pack. 

Dec. 30, 1856. What an evidence it is, 
after all, of civilization, or of a capacity for im- 
provement, that savages like our Indians, who, in 
their protracted wars, stealthily slay men, women, 
and children without mercy, with intense pleas- 
ure, who delight to burn, torture, and devour 
one another, proving themselves more inhuman 
in these respects even than beasts, what a won- 
derful evidence it is, I say, of their capacity for 
improvement, that even they can enter into the 
most formal compact or treaty of peace, burying 
the hatchet, etc., and treating with each other 
with as much consideration as the most enlight- 
ened states. You would say that they had a 
genius for diplomacy as well as for war. — Con- 
sider that Iroquois, torturing his captive, roast- 
ing him before a slow fire, biting off the fingers 
of him alive, and finally eating the heart of him 
dead, betraying not the slightest evidence of 
humanity, and now behold him in the council 
chamber where he meets the representatives of 
the hostile nation to treat of peace, conducting 
with such perfect dignity and decorum, betraying 



WINTER. 67 

such a sense of justice. These savages are equal 
to us civilized men in their treaties, and I fear 
not essentially worse in their wars. 

Dec. 30, 1859. . . . p. m. Going by D 's 

I see a shrike perched on the tip top of the top- 
most, upright twig of an English cherry-tree be- 
fore his house, standing square on the topmost 
bud, balancing himself by a slight motion of his 
tail from time to time. I have noticed this habit 
of the bird before. You would suppose it incon- 
venient for so large a bird to maintain its foot- 
ing there. Scared by my passing in the road 
he flew off, and I thought I would see if he 
alighted in a similar place. He flew toward a 
young elm, whose higher twigs were much more 
slender, though not quite so upright as those of 
the cherry, and I thought he might be excused 
if he alighted on the side of one ; but no, to my 
surprise, he alighted without any trouble upon 
the very top of one of the highest of all, and 
looked around as before. . . . 

What a different phenomenon a muskrat now 
from what it is in summer. Now, if one floats 
or swims, its whole back out, or crawls out upon 
the ice at one of those narrow oval water spaces, 
some twenty rods long (in calm weather, smooth 
mirrors), in a broad frame of white ice or yet 
whiter snow, it is seen at once, as conspicuous 
(or more so) as a fly on a window-pane or a 



68 WINTER. 

mirror. But in summer, how many hundreds 
crawl along the weedy shore, or plunge in the 
long river unsuspected by the boatman ! 

Dec. 30, 1860. ... It is remarkable how 
universally, as respects soil and exposure, the 
whortleberry family is distributed with us. One 
kind or another flourishes in every soil and 
locality. The Pennsylvania and Canada blue- 
berries especially in elevated, cool, and airy 
places, on hills and mountains, in openings in 
the woods and in sproutlands, the high blueberry 
in swamps, and the low blueberry in intermedi- 
ate places, or almost anywhere but in swamps 
hereabouts. The family thus ranges from the 
highest mountain tops to the lowest swamps, and 
forms the prevailing shrub of a great part of 
New England. Not only is this true of the 
family, but hereabouts of the genus, Gaylus- 
sacia, or the huckleberry proper, alone. I do not 
know of a spot where any shrub grows in this 
neighborhood, but one or another species or 
variety of the Gaylussacia may also grow there. 
. . . Such care has nature taken to furnish to 
birds and quadrupeds, and to men, a palatable 
berry of this kind, slightly modified by soil and 
climate, wherever the consumer may chance to 
be. Corn and potatoes, apples and pears have 
comparatively a narrow range, but we can fill 
our basket with whortleberries on the summit 



WINTER. 69 

of Mt. Washington, above almost all the shrubs 
with which we are familiar, the same kind which 
they have in Greenland, and again, when we 
get home, in the lowest swamps, with a kind 
which the Greenlander never found. — First, 
there is the early, dwarf blueberry, the smallest 
of the whortleberry shrubs, the first to ripen its 
fruit, not commonly erect, but more or less 
reclined, often covering the earth with a sort of 
dense matting. The twigs are green, the flowers 
commonly white. Both the shrub and its fruit 
are the most tender and delicate of any that we 
have. The Vaccinium Canadense may be consid- 
ered a more northern form of the same. — Some 
ten days later comes the high" blueberry, or 
swamp blueberry, the commonest stout shrub of 
our swamps, of which I have been obliged to 
cut down not a few, when running lines in sur- 
veying through the low woods. They are a 
pretty sure indication of water, and when I see 
their dense curving tops ahead, I prepare to 
wade or for a wet foot. The flowers have an 
agreeable, sweet, and very promising fragrance, 
and a handful of them plucked and eaten have 
a subacid taste agreeable to some palates. — At 
the same time with the last, the common low 
blueberry is ripe. This is an upright slender 
shrub, with a few long, wand-like branches, 
with green bark and glaucous green leaves, its 



70 WINTER. 

recent shoots crimson-colored. The flowers have 
a considerably rosy tinge, a delicate tint. The 
last two kinds are more densely flowered than 
the others. — The huckleberry is an upright 
shrub, more or less stout according to its expo- 
sure to the sun and air, with a spreading, bushy 
top, a dark brown bark and thick leaves, the 
recent shoots red. The flowers are much more 
red than those of the others. 

As in old times they who dwelt on the heath, 
remote from towns, were backward to adopt the 
doctrines which prevailed there, and were there- 
fore called heathen, so we dwellers in the huckle- 
berry pastures, which are our heathlands, are slow 
to adopt the notions of large towns and cities, 
and may perchance be nicknamed huckleberry 
people. But the worst of it is that the emis- 
saries of the towns care more for our berries 
than we for their doctrines. In those days the 
very race had got a bad name, and ethnicus was 
only another name for heathen. 

All our hills are or have been huckleberry 
hills, — the three hills of Boston, and no doubt 
Bunker Hill among the rest. 

In May and June all our hills and fields are 
adorned with a profusion of the pretty little, 
more or less bell-shaped flowers of this family, 
commonly turned toward the earth, and more or 
less tinged with red or pink, and resounding 



WINTER. 71 

with the hum of insects, each one the forerun- 
ner of a berry the most natural, wholesome, and 
palatable that the soil can produce'. — The early 
low blueberry, which I will call " bluet," adopt- 
ing the name from the Canadians, is probably 
the prevailing kind of whortleberry in New 
England, for the high blueberry and huckle- 
berry are unknown in many sections. 

In many New Hampshire towns, a neighboring 
mountain top is the common berry field of many 
villages, and in the season such a summit will 
be swarming with pickers. A hundred at once 
will rush thither from the surrounding villages, 
with pails and buckets of all descriptions, espe- 
cially on a Sunday, which is their leisure day. 
When camping on such ground, thinking my- 
self out of the world, I have had my solitude 
very unexpectedly interrupted by such a com- 
pany, and found that week days were the only 
Sabbath days there. . . . The mountain tops 
of New Hampshire, often lifted above the 
clouds, are thus covered with this beautiful blue 
fruit in greater profusion than any garden. 

What though the woods be cut down. This 
emergency was long ago foreseen and provided 
for by nature, and the interregnum is not allowed 
to be a barren one. She is full of resources, 
and not only begins instantly to heal that scar, 
but she consoles and refreshes us with fruits 



72 WINTER. 

such as the forest did not produce. ... As the 
sandal wood is said to diffuse its perfume around 
the woodman who cuts it, so, in this case, Nature 
rewards with unexpected fruits the hand that 
lays her waste. 

Dec. 31, 1837. As the least drop of wine 
tinges the whole goblet, so the least particle of 
truth colors our whole life. It is never isolated, 
or simply added as treasure to our stock. When 
any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn 
anew what we thought we knew before. 

Dec. 31, 1840. . . . There must be respira- 
tion as well as aspiration. We should not walk 
on tiptoe, but healthily expand to our full cir- 
cumference on the soles of our feet. ... If 
aspiration be repeated long without respiration, 
it will be no better than expiration, or simply 
losing one's breath. In the healthy, for every 
aspiration there will be a respiration which is 
to make his idea take shape, and give its tone to 
the character. Every time he steps buoyantly 
up, he steps solidly down again, and stands the 
firmer on the ground for his independence of 
it. We should fetch the whole heel, sole, and 
toe horizontally down to earth. Let not ours 
be a wiped virtue, as men go about with an 
array of clean linen, but unwashed as a fresh 
flower, not a clean Sunday garment, but better 
as a soiled week-day one. 



WINTER. 73 

Dec. 81, 1850. . . . The blue jays evidently 
notify each other of the presence of an intruder, 
and will sometimes make a great chattering 
about it, and so communicate the alarm to other 
birds, and to beasts. 

Dec. 31, 1851. The third warm day ; now 
overcast and beginning to drizzle. Still it is 
inspiriting as the brightest weather, though the 
sun surely is not going to shine. There is 
a latent light in the mist, as if there were more 
electricity than usual in the air. There are 
warm, foggy days in winter which excite us. — 
It reminds me, this thick, spring-like weather, 
that I have not enough valued and attended to 
the pure clarity and brilliancy of the winter 
skies. . . . Shall I ever in summer evenings 
see so celestial a reach of blue sky contrasting 
with amber as I saw a few days since. The 
day sky in winter corresponds for clarity to the 
night sky in which the stars shine and twinkle 
so brightly in this latitude. 

I am too late, perhaps, to see the sand foliage 
in the deep cut ; should have been there day 
before yesterday. It is now too wet and soft. 
Yet in some places it is perfect. I see some 
perfect leopard's paws. These things suggest 
that there is motion in the earth as well as on 
the surface; it lives and grows. ... I seem 
to see some of the life that is in the spring bud 



74 WINTER. 

and blossom, more intimately, nearer its foun- 
tain head, the fancy sketches and designs of the 
artist. It is more simple and primitive growth ; 
as if for ages sand and clay might have thus 
flowed into the forms of foliage, before plants 
were produced to clothe the earth. . . . 

I observed this afternoon the old Irish woman 
at the shanty in the woods, sitting out on the 
hillside bare-headed in the rain, and on the icy, 
though thawing ground, knitting. She comes 
out like the ground squirrel, at the least intima- 
tion of warmer weather, while I walk still in a 
great coat, and under an umbrella. She will 
not have to go far to be buried, so close she lives 
to the earth. Such Irish as these are natural- 
izing themselves at a rapid rate, and threaten at 
last to displace the Yankees, as the latter have 
the Indians. The process of acclimation is 
rapid with them. They draw long breaths in 
the American sick-room. . . . There is a low 
mist in the woods. It is a good day to study 
lichens. The view so confined, it compels your 
attention to near objects, and the white back- 
ground reveals the disks of the lichens dis- 
tinctly. They appear more loose, flowing, ex- 
panded, flattened out, the colors brighter for the 
damp. The round, greenish-yellow lichens on 
the white pines loom through the mist (or are 
seen dimly) like shields whose devices you 



WINTER. 15 

would fain read. The trees appear all at once 
covered with the crop of lichens and mosses of 
all kinds. . . . This is their solstice, and your 
eyes run swiftly through the mist to these things 
only. On every fallen twig even, that has lain 
under the snows, as well as on the trees, they 
appear erect, and now first to have attained 
their full expansion. Nature has a day for 
each of her creations. To-day it is an exhi- 
bition of lichens at Forest Hall. The livid 
green of some, the fruit of others, they eclipse 
the trees they cover ; the red, club-shaped 
(baobab tree-like), on the stumps, the erythrean 
stumps ; ah, beautiful is decay. True, as Thales 
said, the world was made out of water. That 
is the principle of all things. 

I do not lay myself open to my friends ? The 
owner of the casket locks it and unlocks it. — 
Treat your friends for what you know them to 
be. Regard no surfaces. Consider not what they 
did but what they intended. Be sure, as you 
know them, you are known of them again. Last 
night I treated my dearest friend ill. Though 
I could find some excuse for myself, it is not 
such excuse as under the circumstances could be 
pleaded in so many words. Instantly, I blamed 
myself, and sought an opportunity to make 
atonement, but the friend avoided me, and with 
kinder feelings even than before I was obliged 



76 WINTER. 

to depart. And now this morning I feel that 
it is too late to speak of the trifle, and besides I 
doubt now, in the cool morning, if I have a 
right to suppose such intimate and serious rela- 
tions as afford a basis for the apology I had con- 
ceived, for even magnanimity must ask this poor 
earth for a field. The virtues even wait for in- 
vitation. Yet I am resolved to know that one 
centrally, through thick and thin, and though 
we should be cold to one another, though we 
should never speak to one another, I will know 
that inward and essential love may exist under 
a superficial coldness, and that the laws of at- 
traction speak louder than words. My true re- 
lation this instant shall be my apology for my 
false relation the last instant. I made haste to 
cast off my injustice as scurf. I own it less 
than another. I have absolutely done with it. 
Let the idle and wavering and apologizing friend 
appropriate it. Methinks our estrangement is 
only like the divergence of the branches which 
unite in the stem. 

To-night I heard Mrs. lecture on woman- 
hood. The most important fact about the lec- 
ture was that a woman gave it, and in that re- 
spect it was suggestive. Went to see her after- 
ward. But the interview added nothing to the 
impression, rather subtracted from it. She was 
a woman in the too common sense, after all. 



WINTER. 11 

You had to fire small charges. I did not have 
a finger in once, for fear of blowing away all 
her works, and so ending the game. You had 
to substitute courtesy for sense and argument. 
It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling 
to sustain a conversation with a lady. I carried 
her lecture for her in my pocket wrapped in her 
handkerchief. My pocket exhales cologne to 
this moment. The championess of woman's 
rights still asks you to be a ladies' man. I can't 
fire a salute for fear some of the guns may be 
shotted. I had to unshot all the guns in truth's 
battery, and fire powder and wadding only. 
Certainly the heart is only for rare occasions ; 
the intellect affords the most unfailing entertain- 
ment. It would only do to let her feel the wind 
of the ball. I fear that to the last, women's lec- 
tures will demand mainly courtesy from men. . . . 

Denuded pines stand in the clearings with 
no old cloak to wrap about them, only the 
apexes of their cones entire, telling a pathetic 
story of the companions that clothed them. So 
stands a man. His clearing around him, he has 
no companions on the hills. The lonely trav- 
eler, looking up, wonders why he was left when 
his companions were taken. 

Dec. 31, 1853. ... It is a remarkable sight, 
this snow-clad landscape, the fences and bushes 
half -buried, and the warm sun on it. . . . The 



78 WINTER. 

town and country is now so still, no rattle of 
wagons nor even jingle of sleigh bells, every 
tread being as with woolen feet. ... In such a 
day as this, the crowing of a cock is heard very 
far and distinctly. . . . There are a few sounds 
still which never fail to affect me, the notes of a 
wood thrush and the sound of a vibrating chord. 
These affect me as many sounds once did often, 
and as almost all should. The strain of the 
seolian harp and of the wood thrush are the 
truest and loftiest preachers that I know now 
left on this earth. I know of no missionaries 
to us heathen comparable to them. They, as it 
were, lift us up in spite of ourselves. They in- 
toxicate and charm us. Where was that strain 
mixed, into which this world was dropped, but 
as a lump of sugar, to sweeten the draught ? I 
would be drunk, drunk, drunk, dead drunk to 
this world with it forever. He that hath ears, 
let him hear. The contact of sound with a hu- 
man ear whose hearing is pure and unimpaired 
is coincident with an ecstasy. Sugar is not so 
sweet to the palate as sound to a healthy ear. 
The hearing of it makes men brave. . . . These 
things alone remind me of my immortality, 
which is else a fable. As I hear, I realize and 
see clearly what at other times I only dimly 
remember. I get the value of the earth's ex- 
tent and the sky's depth. It . . . gives me the 



WINTER. 79 

freedom of all bodies, of all nature. I leave 
my body in a trance, and accompany the zephyr 
and the fragrance. 

Walden froze completely over last night. It is, 
however, all snow-ice, as it froze while it was 
snowing hard. It looks like frozen yeast some- 
what. I waded about in the woods through the 
snow, which certainly averaged considerably 
more than two feet deep where I went. . . . 
Saw probably an otter's track, very broad and 
deep, as if a log had been drawn along. It was 
nearly as obvious as a man's track ; made be- 
fore last night's snow fell. The creature from 
time to time went beneath the snow for a few 
feet to the leaves. This animal I should prob- 
ably never see the least trace of were it not for 
the snow, the great revealer. 

I saw some squirrels' nests of oak leaves high 
in the trees, and directly after a gray squirrel 
tripping along the branches of an oak and shak- 
ing down the snow. He ran down the oak on 
the side opposite from me over the snow and up 
another tall and slender oak, also on the side 
opposite from me which was bare, and leaped 
down about four feet into a white pine, and 
then ran up still higher into its thick green top 
and clung behind the main stem, perfectly still. 
. . . This he did to conceal himself, though 
obliged to come nearer to me to accomplish it. 



80 WINTER. 

His fore feet make but one track in the snow, 
about three inches broad, and his hind feet an- 
other similar one, a foot or more distant, and 
there are two sharp furrows forward, and two 
slighter ones backward from each track. This 
track he makes when running, but I am not 
absolutely certain that all the four feet do not 
come together. There were many holes in the 
snow where he had gone down to the leaves and 
brought up acorns, which he had eaten on the 
nearest twig, dropping fine bits of shell about on 
the snow, and also bits of lichen and bark. I 
noticed the bits of acorn shells, etc., by the holes 
in many places. At times he made a continu- 
ous narrow trail in the snow, somewhat like a 
small muskrat, where he had walked or gone 
several times, and he would go under a few feet 
and come out again. 

Dec. 31, 1854. p. m. On river to Fair 
Haven Pond. A beautiful, clear, not very cold 
day. The shadows on the snow are indigo blue. 
The pines look very dark. The white-oak leaves 
are a cinnamon color, the black and red (?) oak 
leaves a reddish-brown or leather color. ... A 
partridge rises from the alders and skims across 
the river at its widest part, just before me ; a 
fine sight. . . . How glorious the perfect still- 
ness and peace of the winter landscape. 

Dec. 31, 1859. . . . How vain to try to 



WINTER. 81 

teach youth or anybody truths. They can 
only learn them after their own fashion, and 
when they get ready. I do not mean by this to 
condemn our system of education, but to show 
what it amounts to. A hundred boys at college 
are drilled in physics, metaphysics, languages, 
etc. There may be one or two in each hundred, 
prematurely old, perchance, who approach the 
subject from a similar point of view to their 
teachers', but as for the rest and the most prom- 
ising, it is like agricultural chemistry to so many 
Indians. They get a valuable drilling, it may 
be, but they do not learn what you profess to 
teach. They at most only learn where the 
arsenal is, in case they should ever want to use 
any of its weapons. The young men, being 
young, necessarily listen to the lecturer on his- 
tory, just as they do to the singing of a bird. 
They expect to be affected by something he may 
say. It is a kind of poetic pabulum and imagery 
that they get. Nothing comes quite amiss to 
their mill. 

Jan. 1, 1841. All, men and women, woo one. 
There is a fragrance in their breath. 

" Nosque — equis oriens afflavit anhelis." 

And if now they hate, I muse as in sombre, 
cloudy weather, not despairing of the absent ray. 

" Illie sera rubens accendit lumina vesper." 



82 WINTER. 

Jan. 1, 1842. . . . The virtuous soul pos- 
sesses a fortitude and hardihood which not the 
grenadier nor pioneer can match. It never 
shrinks. It goes singing to its work. Effort is 
its relaxation. The rude pioneer work of the 
world has been done by the most devoted wor- 
shipers of beauty. ... In winter is their cam- 
paign. They never go into quarters. They are 
elastic under the heaviest burden, under the 
extremest physical suffering. 

Jan. 1, 1852. ... I have observed that one 
mood is the natural critic of another. When 
possessed with a strong feeling on any subject 
foreign to the one I may be writing on, I know 
very well what of good and what of bad I have 
written on the latter. It looks to me now as it 
will ten years hence. My life is then earnest, 
and will tolerate no makeshifts nor nonsense. 
What is tinsel, or euphuism, or irrelevant is re- 
vealed to such a touchstone. In the light of a 
strong feeling all things take their places, and 
truth of every kind is seen as such. Now let me 
read my verses, and I will tell you if the god 
has had a hand in them. I wish to survey my 
composition for a moment from the least favor- 
able point of view. I wish to be translated to 
the future, and look at my work as it were at a 
structure on the plain, to observe what portions 
have crumbled under the influence of the ele- 
ments. 



WINTER. 83 

9.30 p. m. To Fair Haven. Moon little 
more than half full. Not a cloud in the sky. It 
is a remarkably warm night for the season, 
the ground almost entirely bare. The stars are 
dazzlingly bright. The fault may be in my own 
barrenness, but methinks there is a certain pov- 
erty about the winter night's sky. The stars of 
higher magnitude are more bright and dazzling, 
and therefore appear more near and numerable ; 
while those that appear indistinct and infinitely 
remote in the summer, giving the impression of 
unfathomableness in the sky, are scarcely seen 
at all. The front halls of heaven are so bril- 
liantly lighted that they quite eclipse the more 
remote. The sky has fallen many degrees. 

The worst kind of tick to get under your 
skin is yourself in an irritable mood. . . . 
These are some of the differences between this 
and the autumn or summer night : the stiffened 
glebe under my feet, the dazzle and seeming 
nearness of the stars, the duller gleam from 
ice on rivers and ponds, the white spots in the 
fields and streaks by the wall sides where are 
the remains of drifts yet unmelted. Perhaps 
the only thing that spoke to me in this walk 
was the bare, lichen-covered, gray rock at the 
cliff, in the moonlight, naked and almost warm 
as in summer. 

I have so much faith in the power of truth to 



84 WINTER. 

communicate itself -that I should not believe a 
friend, if lie should tell me that he had given 
credit to an unjust rumor concerning me. Sus- 
pect! Ah, yes, you may suspect a thousand 
things, but I well know that what you suspect 
most confidently of all is just the truth. Your 
other doubts but flavor this your main suspi- 
cion. They are the condiments which, taken 
alone, do simply bite the tongue. . . . 

Jan. 1, 1853. This morning we have some- 
thing between ice and frost on the trees, etc. 
The rocks cased in ice look like alum rocks. 
This, not frozen mist or frost, but frozen drizzle, 
collected around the slightest cores, gives promi- 
nence to the least withered herbs and grasses. 
Where yesterday was a plain, smooth field ap- 
pears now a teeming crop of fat, icy herbage. 
The stems of the herbs on the north side are 
enlarged from ten to one hundred times. The 
addition is so universally on the north side that 
a traveler could not lose the points of the com- 
pass to-day, though it should be never so dark ; 
for every blade of grass would serve to guide 
him, telling from which side the storm came yes- 
terday. These straight stems of grasses stand up 
like white batons, or sceptres, and make a con- 
spicuous foreground to the landscape, from six 
inches to three feet high. C. thought that these 
fat, icy branches on the withered grass and 



WINTER. 85 

herbs had no nucleus, but looking closer I 
showed him the fine, black, wiry threads on 
which they impinged, which made him laugh with 
surprise. . . . The clover and sorrel send up a 
dull, green gleam through this icy coat, like 
strange plants. . . . Some weeds bear the ice 
in masses ; some, like the trumpet weed and 
tansy, in balls for each dried flower. What a 
crash of jewels as you walk ! The most careless 
walker, who never deigned to look at these 
humble weeds before, cannot help observing 
them now. This is why the herbage is left to 
stand dry in the fields all winter. Upon a solid 
foundation of ice stand out, pointing in all di- 
rections between N. W. and N. E., or within 
the limits of 90°, little spicula, or crystallized 
points, half an inch, or more, in length. Upon 
the dark, glazed, plowed ground, where a mere 
wiry stem rises, its north side is thickly clad 
with these snow-white spears, like some Indian 
head-dress, as if it had attracted all the frost. I 
saw a prinos bush full of large berries by the 
wall in Hubbard's field. Standing on the west 
side, the contrast of the red berries with their 
white incrustation or prolongation on the north 
was admirable. I thought I had never seen 
the berries so dazzlingiy bright. The whole 
north side of the bush, berries and stock, was 
beautifully incrusted, and when I went round to 



86 WINTER. 

the north side the redness of the berries came 
softened through, and tingeing the allied snow- 
white bush, like an evening sky beyond. These 
adjoined snow or ice berries, being beset within 
the limits of 90° on the N. with those icy par- 
ticles or spicula, between which the red glow, 
and sometimes the clear red itself, was some- 
times visible, produced the appearance of a 
raspberry bush full of over-ripe fruit. 

Standing on the north side of a bush or tree, 
looking against the sky, you see only the white 
ghost of a tree, without a mote of earthiness; 
but as you go round it, the dark core comes into 
view. It makes all the odds imaginable whether 
you are traveling N. or S. The drooping birches 
along the edges of woods are the most feathery, 
fairy-like ostrich plumes, and the color of their 
trunks increases the delusion. The weight of 
the ice gives to the pines the forms which north- 
ern trees, like the firs, constantly wear, bending 
and twisting the branches ; for the twigs and 
plumes of the pines, being frozen, remain as the 
wind held them, and new portions of the trunk 
are exposed. Seen from the N. there is no 
greenness in the pines, and the character of the 
tree is changed. The willows along the edge of 
the river look like sedge in the meadows. The 
sky is overcast, and a fine snowy hail and rain 
is falling, and these ghost-like trees make a seen- 



WINTER. 87 

ery which reminds you of Spitzbergen. I see 
now the beauty of the causeway by the bridge, 
alders below swelling into the road, overtopped 
by willows and maples. The fine grasses and 
shrubs in the meadow rise to meet and mingle 
with the drooping willows, and the whole makes 
an indistinct impression like a mist. Through 
all this, the road runs toward those white, ice- 
clad, ghostly or fairy trees in the distance, to- 
ward spirit-land. The pines are as white as a 
counterpane, with raised embroidery and white 
tassels and fringes. Each fascicle of leaves or 
needles is held apart by an icy club surmounted 
by a little snowy or icy ball. Finer than the 
Saxon arch is this path running under the 
pines, roofed not with crossing boughs, but 
drooping, ice-covered, irregular twigs. In the 
midst of this stately pine, towering like the sol- 
emn ghost of a tree, I see the white, ice-clad 
boughs of other trees appearing, of a different 
character ; sometimes oaks with leaves incrusted, 
or fine-sprayed maples or walnuts. But finer 
than all, this red oak, its leaves incrusted like 
shields a quarter of an inch thick, and a thousand 
fine spicula like long serrations at right angles 
with their planes upon the edges. It produces 
an indescribably rich effect, the color of the leaf 
coming softened through the ice, a delicate fawn 
of many shades. Where the plumes of the pitch 



88 WINTER. 

pine are short and spreading close to the trunk, 
sometimes perfect cups or rays are formed. 
Pitch pines present rough, massy grenadier 
plumes, each having a darker spot or cavity in 
the end where you look in to the bud. I listen 
to the booming of the pond as if it were a rea- 
sonable creature. I return at last in the rain, 
and am coated with a glaze, like the fields. . . . 

After talking with uncle Charles, the other 
night, about the worthies of this country, Web- 
ster and the rest, as usual, considering who were 
geniuses and who not, I showed him up to 
bed; and when I had got into bed myself I 
heard the chamber door opened, after eleven 
o'clock, and he called out in an earnest, stento- 
rian voice, loud enough to wake the whole house, 
" Henry ! was John Quincy Adams a genius ? " 
"No, I think not," was my reply. "Well, I 
did n't think he was," answered he. 

Jan. 1, 1854. Le Jeune, referring to the 
death of a young Frenchwoman who had de- 
voted her life to the savages of Canada, uses this 
expression: "Finally this beautiful soul de- 
tached itself from its body the 15th of March, " 
etc. 

The drifts mark the standstill or equilibrium 
between the currents of air or particular winds. 
In our greatest snow-storms, the wind being 
northerly, the greatest drifts are on the south 



WINTER. 89 

side of houses and fences. ... I notice that in 
the angle made by our house and shed, aS. W. 
exposure, the snow-drift does not lie close about 
the pump, but is a foot off, forming a circular 
bowl, showing that there was an eddy about it. 
The snow is like a mould, showing the form of 
the eddying currents of air which have been im- 
pressed on it, while the drift and all the rest is 
that which fell between the currents or where 
they counterbalanced each other. These bound- 
ary lines are mountain barriers. 

The white-in-tails, or grass finches, linger 
pretty late, flitting in flocks. They come only 
so near winter as the white in their tails indi- 
cates. . . . 

The snow buntings and the tree sparrows are 
the true spirits of the snow-storm. They are the 
animated beings that ride upon it and have their 
life in it. 
/ ?s> The snow is the great betrayer. It not only 
shows the track of mice, otters, etc., etc., which 
else we should rarely, if ever, see, but the tree 
sparrows are more plainly seen against its white 
ground, and they in turn are attracted by the 
dark weeds it reveals. It also drives the crows 
and other birds out of the woods to the villages 
for food. We might expect to find in the snow 
the footprint of a life superior to our own, of 
which no zoology takes cognizance. Is there no 



90 WINTER. 

trace of a nobler life than that of an otter or an 
escaped convict to be looked for in it ? Shall we 
suppose that is the only life that has been abroad 
in the night ? It is only the savage that can see 
the track of no higher life than an otter's. 
Why do the vast snow plains give us pleasure, 
the twilight of the bent and half-buried woods? 
Is not all there consonant with virtue, justice, 
purity, courage, magnanimity ; and does not all 
this amount to the track of a higher life than the 
otter's, — a life which has not gone by and left 
a footprint merely, but is there with its beauty, 
its music, its perfume, its sweetness, to exhilarate 
and recreate us ? All that we perceive is the 
impress of its spirit. If there is a perfect gov- 
ernment of the world according to the highest 
laws, do we find no trace of intelligence there, 
whether in the snow, or the earth, or in our- 
selves, — no other trail but such as a dog can 
scent ? Is there none which an angel can detect 
and follow, — none to guide a man in his pil- 
grimage, which water will not conceal ? Is there 
no odor of sanctity to be perceived ? Is its trail 
too old ? Have mortals lost the scent ? . . . 
Are there not hunters who seek for something 
higher than foxes, with judgment more discrim- 
inating than the senses of fox-hounds, who rally 
to a nobler music than that of the hunting-horn? 
As there is contention among the fishermen who 



WINTER. 91 

shall be the first to reach the pond as soon as the 
ice will bear, in spite of the cold ; as the hunters 
are forward to take the field as soon as the first 
snow has fallen, so he who would make the most 
of his life for discipline must be abroad early 
and late, in spite of cold and wet, in pursuit of 
nobler game, whose traces are there most dis- 
tinct, — a life which we seek not to destroy, but 
to make our own ; which when pursued does not 
earth itself, does not burrow downward, but up- 
ward, takes not to the trees, but to the heavens, 
as its home ; which the hunter pursues with 
winged thoughts and aspirations (these the dogs 
that tree it), rallying his pack with the bugle 
notes of undying faith. . . . Do the Indian and 
hunter only need snow-shoes, while the saint sits 
indoors in embroidered slippers? ^ 

Jan. 1, 1856. . . . p. m. To Walden. . . . 
On the ice at Walden are very beautiful large 
leaf crystals in great profusion. The ice is fre- 
quently thickly covered with them for many 
rods. They seem to be connected with the ro- 
settes, a running together of them, look like a 
loose bunch of small white feathers springing 
from a tuft of down, for their shafts are lost in a 
tuft of fiue snow like the down about the shaft 
of a feather, as if a feather bed had been shaken 
over the ice. They are, on a close examination, 
surprisingly perfect leaves, like ferns, only very 



92 WINTER. 

broad for their length, and commonly more on 
one side the midrib than the other. They are 
from an inch to an inch and a half long, and 
three fourths of an inch wide, and slanted, 
where I look, from the S. W. They have first a 
very distinct midrib, though so thin that they 
cannot be taken up ; then distinct ribs branch- 
ing from this, commonly opposite ; and minute 
ribs springing again from these last, as in many 
ferns, the last running to each crenation in the 
border. How much farther they are subdivided 
the naked eye cannot discern. They are so thin 
and fragile that they melt under your breath 
while you are looking closely at them. A fisher- 
man says they were much finer in the morning. 
In other places the ice is strewn with a different 
kind of frost-work, in little patches, as if oats 
had been spilled, like fibres of asbestos rolled, 
one half or three fourths of an inch long and one 
eighth or more wide. Here and there patches 
of them a foot or two over, like some boreal 
grain spilled. 

Jan. 1, 1858. ... I have lately been survey- 
ing the Walden woods so extensively and mi- 
nutely that I can see it mapped in my mind's 
eye as so many men's wood-lots, and am aware 
when I walk there that I am at a given moment 
passing from such a one's wood-lot to such an- 
other's. I fear this particular dry knowledge 



WINTER. 93 

may affect my imagination and fancy, that it 
will not be easy to see so much wildness and 
native vigor there as formerly. No thicket will 
seem so unexplored now that I know a stake 
and stones may be found in it. 

In these respects those Maine woods differ 
essentially from ours. There you are never re- 
minded that the wilderness you are treading is 
after all some villager's familiar wood-lot, from 
which his ancestors have sledded their fuel for 
a generation or two, or some widow's thirds, mi- 
nutely described in some old deed which is 
recorded, of which the owner has got a plan too, 
and of which the old boundmarks may be found 
every forty rods, if you will search. 

^Vhat a history this Concord wilderness, which 
I affect so much, may have had ! How many old 
deeds describe it, some particular wild spot, how 
it passed from Cole to Robinson, and Robinson 
to Jones, and from Jones finally to Smith in 
course of years. Some had cut it over three 
times during their lives, built walls and made 
a pasture of it perchance, and some burned it 
and sowed it with rye. . . . 

In the Maine woods you are not reminded of 
these things. 'Tis true the map informs you 
that you stand on land granted by the State to 
such an academy, or on Bingham's purchase ; 
but these names do not impose on you, for you 



94 WINTER. 

see nothing to remind you of the academy or of 
Bingham. 
\ Jan. 2, 1841. . . . Every needle of the white 

nine__trembles distinctly in the breeze, which on 
the sunny side gives the whole tree a shimmer- 
ing, seething aspect. . . . 

I stopped short in the path to-day to admire 
how the trees grow up without forethought, re- 
gardless of the time and circumstances. They 
do not wait, as men do. Now is the golden age 
of the sapling; earth, air, sun, and rain are 
occasion enough. 

They were no better in primeval centuries. 
"The winter of" their "discontent" never 
comes. Witness the buds of the native poplar, 
standing gayly out to the frost, on the sides of 
its bare switches. They express a naked confi- 
dence. 

With cheerful heart I could be a sojourner in 
the wilderness. I should be sure to find there 
the catkins of the alder. When I read of them 
in the accounts of northern adventurers by 
Baffin's Bay or Mackenzie's River, I see how 
even there too I could dwell. They are my 
little vegetable redeemers. Methinks my virtue 
will not flag ere they come again. They are 
worthy to have had a greater than Neptune or 
Ceres for their donor. Who was the benignant 
goddess that bestowed them on mankind ? 



WINTER. 95 

I saw a fox run across the pond to-day with 
the carelessness of freedom. As at intervals I 
traced his course in the sunshine, as he trotted 
along the ridge of a hill on the crust, it seemed 
as if the sun never shone so proudly, sheer down 
on the hillside, and the winds and woods were 
hushed in sympathy. I gave up to him sun and 
earth as to their true proprietor. He did not go 
in the sunshine, but the sunshine seemed to fol- 
low him. There was a visible sympathy between 
him and it. 

Jan. 2, 1842. The ringing of the church 
bell is a much more melodious sound than any 
that is heard within the church. All great 
values are thus public, and undulate like sound 
through the atmosphere. Wealth cannot pur- 
chase any great private solace or convenience. 
Riches are only the means of sociality. I will 
depend on the extravagance of my neighbors 
for my luxuries ; they will take care to pamper 
me, if I will be overfed. The poor man, who 
sacrificed nothing for the gratification, seems to 
derive a safer and more natural enjoyment from 
his neighbor's extravagance than he does him- 
self. It is a new natural product, from the con- 
templation of which he derives new vigor and 
solace as from a natural phenomenon. 

In moments of quiet and leisure my thoughts 
are more apt to revert to some natural than to 
any human relation. 



96 WINTER. 

Chaucer's sincere sorrow in his latter days for 
the grossness of his earlier works, and that he 
" cannot recall and annul " what he had " writ- 
ten of the base and filthy love of men towards 
women, but alas, they are now continued from 
man to man," says he, " and I cannot do what I 
desire," is all very creditable to his character. 

Jan. 2, 1853. 9 A. m. Down railroad to Cliffs. 
A clear day, a pure sky with cirrhi. In this clear 
air and bright sunlight, the ice-covered trees 
have a new beauty, especially the birches along 
under the edge of Warren's wood on each side 
of the railroad, bent quite to the ground in every 
kind of curve. At a distance, as you are ap- 
proaching them endwise, they look like the white 
tents of Indians under the edge of the wood. 
Tbe birch is thus remarkable, perhaps, from the 
feathery form of the tree, whose numerous small 
branches sustain so great weight, bending it to 
the ground ; and, moreover, because, from the 
color of the bark, the core is less observable. 
The oaks not only are less pliant in the trunk, 
but have fewer and stiff er twigs and branches. 
The birches droop over in all directions, like 
ostrich feathers. Most wood paths are impass- 
able now to a carriage, almost to a foot traveler, 
from the number of saplings and boughs bent 
over even to the ground in them. Both sides of 
the deep cut shine in the sun as if silver-plated, 



WINTER. 97 

and the fine spray of a myriad bushes on the 
edge of the bank sparkle like silver. The tele- 
graph wire is coated to ten times its size, and 
looks like a slight fence scalloping along at a 
distance. . . . When we climb the bank at 
Stow's wood-lot and come upon the piles of 
freshly split white pine wood (for he is ruth- 
lessly laying it waste), the transparent ice, like 
a thick varnish, beautifully exhibits the color 
of the clear, tender, yellowish wood, pumpkin 
pine (?), and its grain. We pick our way over 
a bed of pine boughs a foot or two deep, cover- 
ing the ground, each twig and needle thickly in- 
crusted with ice, one vast gelid mass, which our 
feet crunch, as if we were walking through the 
cellar of some confectioner to the gods. The 
invigorating scent of the recently cut pines 
refreshes us, if that is any atonement for this 
devastation. . . . Especially now do I notice the 
hips, barberries, and winter-berries for their red. 
The red or purplish catkins of the alders are in- 
teresting as a winter fruit, and also of the birch. 
But few birds about. Apparently their gran- 
aries are locked up in ice, with which the grasses 
and buds are coated. Even far in the horizon 
the pine tops are turned to fir or spruce by the 
weight of the ice bending them down, so that 
they look like a spruce swamp. No two trees 
wear the ice alike. The short plumes and needles 



98 WINTER. 

of the spruce make a very pretty and peculiar 
figure. I see some oaks in the distance, which, 
from their branches being curved and arched 
downward and massed, are turned into perfect 
elms, which suggests that this is the peculiarity 
of the elm. Few, if any, other trees are thus 
wisp-like, the branches gracefully drooping. I 
mean some slender red and white oaks which 
have been recently left in a clearing. Just 
apply a weight to the end of the boughs which 
will cause them to droop, and to each particular 
twig which will mass them together, and you 
have perfect elms. Seen at the right angle, each 
ice-incrusted blade of stubble shines like a prism 
with some color of the rainbow, intense blue, or 
violet, and red. The smooth field, clad the other 
day with a low wiry grass, is now converted into 
rough stubble land, where you walk with crunch- 
ing feet. It is remarkable that the trees can 
ever recover from the burden which bends them 
to the ground. I should like to weigh a limb 
of this pitch pine. The character of the tree is 
changed. I have now passed the bars, and am 
approaching the Cliffs. The forms and variety 
of the ice are particularly rich here, there are 
so many low bushes and weeds before me as I 
ascend toward the sun, especially very small 
white pines almost merged in the ice-incrusted 
ground. All objects are to the eye polished 



WINTER. 99 

silver. It is a perfect land of faery. Le Jeune 
describes the same in Canada in 1636 : " Nos 
grands bois ne paroissoient qu'une forest de 
cristal." . . . The bells are particularly sweet 
this morning. I hear more, methinks, than ever 
before. . . . Men obey their call and go to the 
stove-warmed church, though God exhibits him- 
self to the walker in a frosted bush to-day as 
much as he did in a burning one to Moses of 
old. We build a fire on the Cliffs, When 
kicking to pieces a pine stump for the fat knots 
which alone would burn this icy day, at the risk 
of spoiling my boots, having looked in vain for 
a stone, I thought how convenient would be an 
Indian stone axe to batter it with. The bark of 
white birch, though covered with ice, burned 
well. We soon had a roaring fire of fat pine on 
a shelf of rock from which we overlooked the 
icy landscape. The sun, too, was melting the 
ice on the rocks, and the water was purling 
downwards in dark bubbles exactly like polly- 
wogs. What a good word is flame, expressing 
the form and soul of fire, lambent, with forked 
tongue ! We lit a fire to see it, rather than to 
feel it, it is so rare a sight these days. It seems 
good to have our eyes ache once more with 
smoke. What a peculiar, indescribable color 
has this flame ! — a reddish or lurid yellow, not 
so splendid or full of light as of life and heat. 



100 WINTER. 

These fat roots made much flame and a very 
black smoke, commencing where the flame left 
off, which cast fine flickering shadows on the 
rocks. There was some bluish-white smoke from 
the rotten part of the wood. Then there was 
the fine white ashes which farmers' wives some- 
times use for pearlash. 

Jan. 2, 1854. . . . The tints of the sunset 
sky are never purer and more ethereal than in 
the coldest winter days. This evening, though 
the colors are not brilliant, the sky is crystal- 
line, and the pale fawn-tinged clouds are very 
beautiful. I wish to get on to a hill to look 
down on the winter landscape. We go about 
these days as if we were in fetters ; we walk in 
the stocks, stepping into the holes made by our 
predecessors. . . . The team and driver have 
long since gone by, but I see the marks of his 
whiplash on the snow, its recoil ; but, alas ! 
these are not a complete tally of the strokes 
which fell upon the oxen's back. The unmerci- 
ful driver thought, perhaps, that no one saw him, 
but unwittingly he recorded each blow on the 
unspotted snow behind his back as in a book of 
life. To more searching eyes the marks of his 
lash are in the air. I paced partly through the 
pitch-pine wood, and partly the open field from 
the turnpike by the Lee place to the railroad from 
N. to S., more than one fourth of a mile, meas- 



WINTER. 101 

uring at every ten paces. The average of sixty- 
five measurements up hill and down was nine- 
teen inches. This, after increasing those in the 
woods by one inch (little enough), on account 
of the snow on the pines. ... I think one 
would have to pace a mile on a N. and S. line, 
up and down hill, through woods and fields, to 
get a quite reliable result. The snow will drift 
sometimes the whole width of a field, and fill a 
road or valley beyond, so that it would be well 
your measuring included several such driftings. 
Very little reliance is to be put on the usual 
estimates of the depth of snow. I have heard 
different men set this snow at six, fifteen, eight- 
een, twenty-four, thirty -six, and forty -eight 
inches. My snow-shoes sank about four inches 
into the snow this morning, but more than twice 
as much the 29th. 

On the N. side of the railroad, above the Eed 
House crossing, the train has cut through a 
drift about one fourth of a mile long, and two 
to nine feet high, straight up and down. It re- 
minds me of the Highlands, the Pictured Hocks, 
the side of an iceberg, etc. Now that the sun 
has just sunk below the horizon, it is wonderful 
what an amount of soft light it appears to be 
absorbing. There appears to be more day just 
here by its side than anywhere else. I can al- 
most see to a depth of six inches into it. It is 
made translucent, it is so saturated with light. 



102 WINTER. 

I have heard of one precious stone found in 
Concord, the cinnamon stone. A geologist has 
spoken of it as found in this town, and a farmer 
described to me one he once found, perhaps the 
same referred to by the other. He said it was 
as large as a brick, and as thick, and yet you 
could distinguish a pin through it, it was so 
transparent. 

Jan. 2, 1855. . . . Yesterday [skating] we 
saw the pink light on the snow within a rod of 
us. The shadows of the bridges, etc., on the 
snow were a dark indigo blue. 

Jan. 2, 1859. . . . Going up the hill through 
Stow's young oak wood-land, I listen to the 
sharp, dry rustle of the withered oak leaves. 
This is the voice of the wood now. It would be 
comparatively still and more dreary here in 
other respects, if it were not for these leaves 
that hold on. It sounds like the roar of the 
sea, and is inspiriting like that, suggesting how 
all the land is sea-coast to the aerial ocean. It 
is the sound of the surf, the rut, of an unseen 
ocean, — billows of air breaking on the forest, 
like water on itself or on sand and rocks. It 
rises and falls, swells and dies away, with agree- 
able alternation, as the sea surf does. Perhaps 
the landsmen can foretell a storm by it. It is 
remarkable how universal these grand murmurs 
are, these backgrounds of sound, — the surf, 



WINTER. 103 

the wind in the forest, waterfalls, etc., — which 
yet to the ear and in their origin are essentially 
one voice, the earth voice, the breathing or 
snoring of the creature. The earth is our ship, 
and this is the sound of the wind in her rigging 
as we sail. Just as the inhabitant of Cape Cod 
hears the surf ever breaking on its shores, so we 
countrymen hear this kindred surf on the leaves 
of the forest. Regarded as a voice, though it 
is not articulate, as our articulate sounds are 
divided into vowels (though this is nearer a 
consonant sound), labials, dentals, palatals, sibi- 
lants, mutes, aspirates, etc., so this may be 
called folial or frondal, produced by air driven 
against the leaves, and comes nearest to our 
sibilants or aspirates. 

Michaux said that white oaks might be dis- 
tinguished by retaining their leaves in the win- 
ter, but as far as my observation goes they 
cannot be so distinguished. All our large oaks 
may retain a few leaves at the base of the lower 
limbs and about the trunk, though only a few, 
and the white oak scarcely more than the others ; 
while the same trees, when young, are all alike 
thickly clothed in the winter, but the leaves of 
the white oak are the most withered and shriv- 
eled of them all. 

There being some snow on the ground, I can 
easily distinguish the forest on the mountains 



104 WINTER. 

(the Peterboro Hills, etc.), and tell which are 
forested, those parts and those mountains being 
dark, like a shadow. I cannot distinguish the 
forest thus far in summer. 

When I hear the hypercritical quarreling 
about grammar and style, the position of the 
particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting 
every speaker to certain rules, — Mr. Webster, 
perhaps, not having spoken according to Mr. 
Kirkham's rule, — I see they forget that the 
first requisite and rule is that expression shall 
be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a 
brute, or an interjection : first of all, mother 
tongue; and last of all, artificial or father 
tongue. Essentially, your truest poetic sentence 
is as free and lawless as a lamb's bleat. The 
grammarian is often one who can neither cry 
nor laugh, yet thinks he can express human emo- 
tions. So the posture-masters tell you how you 
shall walk, turning your toes out excessively, 
perhaps; but so the beautiful walkers are not 
made. . . . 

Minott says that a fox will lead a dog on to 
the ice in order that he may get in. Tells of 
Jake Lakin losing a hound so, which went under 
the ice and was drowned below the Holt. . . . 
They used to cross the river there on the ice, 
going to market formerly. 

Jan. 3, 1842. It is pleasant when one can 



WINTER. 105 

relieve the grossness of the kitchen and the table 
by the simple beauty of his repast, so that there 
may be anything in it to attract the eye of the 
artist, even. I have been popping corn to-night, 
which is only a more rapid blossoming of the 
seed under a greater than July heat. The 
popped corn is a perfect winter flower, hinting 
of anemones and houstonias. . . . Here has 
bloomed for my repast such a delicate flower as 
will soon spring by the wall sides, and this is 
as it should be. Why should not Nature revel 
sometimes, and genially relax, and make herself 
familiar at my board ? I would have my house 
a bower fit to entertain her. It is a feast of 
such innocence as might have snowed down ; on 
my warm hearth sprang these cerealian blos- 
soms ; here was the bank where they grew. Me- 
thinks some such visible token of approval 
would always accompany the simple and healthy 
repast, — some such smiling or blessing upon it. 
Our appetite should always be so related to our 
taste, and our board be an epitome of the pri- 
meval table which Nature sets by hill and wood 
and stream for her dumb pensioners, 
v Jan. 3, 1852. ... A spirit sweeps the string 
of the telegraph harp, and strains of music are 
drawn out suddenly,* like the wire itself. . . . 
What becomes of the story of a tortoise shell on 
the seashore now? The world is young, and 



106 WINTER. 

music is its infant voice. I do not despair of a 
world where you have only to stretch an ordi- 
nary wire from tree to tree to hear such strains 
drawn from it by New England breezes as make 
Greece and all antiquity seem poor in melody. 
Why was man so made as to be thrilled to his 
inmost being by the vibrating of a wire ? Are 
not inspiration and ecstasy a more rapid vibra- 
tion of the nerves swept by the inrushing ex- 
cited spirit, whether zephyral or boreal in its 
character ? 

Jan. 3, 1853. ... I love Nature partly be- 
cause she is not man, but a retreat from him. 
None of his institutions control or pervade her. 
Here a different kind of right prevails. In her 
midst I can be glad with an entire gladness. If 
this world were all man, I could not stretch my- 
self, I should lose all hope. He is constraint ; 
she is freedom to me. He makes me wish for 
another world ; she makes me content with this. 
None of the joys she supplies is subject to his 
rules and definitions. What he touches he 
taints. In thought he moralizes. One would 
think that no free, joyful labor was possible to 
him. How infinite and pure the least pleasure 
of which nature is basis compared with the con- 
gratulation of mankind ! The joy which nature 
yields is like that afforded by the frank words of 
one we love. 



WINTER. 107 

Man, man is the devil, 
The source of all evil. 

Methinks these prosers, with their saws and 
their laws, do not know how glad a man can 
be. What wisdom, what warning, can prevail 
against gladness? There is no law so strong 
which a little gladness may not transgress. I 
have a room all to myself. It is nature. It is 
a place beyond the jurisdiction of human govern- 
ments. Pile up your books, the records of sad- 
ness, your saws and your laws, Nature is glad 
cutside, and her many worms within will ere- 
long topple them down. . . . Nature is a prairie 
for outlaws. There are two worlds, — the post- 
office and nature. I know them both. I con- 
tinually forget mankind and their institutions, 
as I do a bank. /^ 

Jan. 3, 1856. It is astonishing how far a 
merely well-dressed and good looking man may 
go without being challenged by a sentinel. What 
is called good society will bid high for such. 

The man whom the state has raised to high 
office, like that of governor, for instance, from 
some, it may be, honest but less respected call- 
ing, cannot return to his former humble but 
profitable pursuits, his old customers will be so 
shy of him. His ex-honorableness stands seri- 
ously in his way, whether he be a lawyer or a 
shopkeeper. He can't get ex-honorated. So he 



108 WINTER. 

becomes a sort of state pauper, an object of 
charity on its hands, which the state is bound in 
honor to see through and provide with offices of 
similar respectability, that he may not come to 
want. The man who has been president be- 
comes the ex-president, and can't travel or stay 
at home anywhere, but men will persist in pay- 
ing respect to his ex-ship. It is cruel to remem- 
ber his deeds so long. When his time is out, 
why can't they let the poor fellow go ? 

Jan. 3, 1861. Why should the ornamental 
tree society confine its labors to the highway 
only? An Englishman laying out his ground 
does not regard simply the avenues and walks. 
Does not the landscape deserve attention ? 
What are the natural features which make a 
township handsome? A river, with its water- 
falls and meadows, a lake, a hill, a cliff or indi- 
vidual rocks, a forest, and ancient trees standing 
singly. Such things are beautiful ; they have a 
high use which dollars and cents never repre- 
sent. If the inhabitants of a town were wise, 
they would seek to preserve these things, though 
at a considerable expense ; for such things edu- 
cate far more than any hired teachers, preach- 
ers, or any system of school education at present 
orgainzed.^Far the handsomest thing I saw in 
Boxboro was its noble oak wood. I doubt if 
there is a finer one in Massachusetts. Let the 



WINTER. 109 

town keep it a century longer, and men will 
make pilgrimages to it from all parts of the 
country. And. yet it would be very like the rest 
of New England if Boxboro were ashamed of 
that wood-land. I have since learned, however, 
that she is contented to let that forest stand, in- 
stead of the houses and farms that might sup- 
plant it, because the land pays a much larger 
tax to the town now than it would then. I said 
to myself, if the history of the town is written, 
the chief stress is probably laid on its parish, 
and there is not one word about the forest in it. 
It would be worth while if in each town a com- 
mittee were appointed to see that the beauty of 
the town received no detriment. If we have the 
biggest bowlder in the country, then it should 
not belong to an individual, nor be made into 
a door- step. As in many countries precious 
metals belong to the crown, so here more pre- 
cious natural objects of rare beauty should be- 
long to the public. Not only the channel, but 
both banks of every river should be a public 
highway. It is not the only use of a river, to 
float on it. Think of a mountain top in the 
township, even to the minds of the Indians a 
sacred place, only accessible through private 
grounds, — a temple, as it were, which you can- 
not enter except at the risk of letting out or let- 
ting in somebody's cattle, — in fact the temple 



110 WINTER. 

itself in this case private property, and standing 
in a. man's cow-yard. New Hampshire courts 
have lately been deciding, as if it were for 
them to decide, whether the top of Mt. Washing- 
ton belonged to A. or to B., and it being decided 
in favor of B., as I hear, he went up one winter 
with the proper officers and took formal posses- 
sion. But I think that the top of Mt. Wash- 
ington should not be private property ; it should 
be but an opportunity for modesty and rever- 
ence, or if only to suggest that earth has higher 
uses than we commonly put her to. . . . 

Thus we behave like oxen in a flower garden. 
The true fruit of nature can only be plucked 
with a delicate hand not bribed by any earthly 
reward, and a fluttering heart. No hired man 
can help us to gather this crop. How few ever 
get beyond feeding, clothing, sheltering, and 
warming themselves in this world, and begin to 
treat themselves as intellectual and moral beings. 
. . . Most men, it seems to me, do not care for 
Nature, and would sell their share in all her 
beauty, as long as they may live, for a stated 
sum. Thank God, men cannot as yet fly, and 
lay waste the sky as well as the earth. We are 
safe on that side for the present. We cut down 
the few old oaks which witnessed the transfer of 
the township from the Indian to the white man, 
and commence our museum with a cartridge-box 
taken from a British soldier in 1775. Jp\ 



WINTER. Ill 

| Jan. 4, 1841. I know a woman who is as 
true to me, and as incessant with her mild re- 
buke as the blue sky. When I stand under her 
cope, instantly all pretension drops off, and I am 
swept by an influence as by a wind and rain 
which remove all taint. I am fortunate that I 
can pass and repass before her each day, and 
prove my strength in her glances. She is far 
truer to me than to herself. Her eyes are like 
the windows of nature, through which I catch 
glimpses of the native land of the soul. From 
them comes a light which is not of the sun. His 
rays are in eclipse when they shine on me. 

Jan. 4, 1850. The longest silence is the most 
pertinent question most pertinently put. Em- 
phatically silent. The most important ques- 
tions, whose answers concern us more than any 
others, are never put in any other way. 

It is difficult for two strangers, mutually well 
disposed, so truly to bear themselves toward each 
other that a feeling of falseness and hollowness 
shall not soon spring up between them. The 
least anxiety to behave truly, vitiates the rela- 
tion. .* 

Jan. 4, 1853. To what I will call Yellow 
Birch Swamp, E. Hubbard's, in the north part 
of the town, . . . west of the Hunt pasture. 
There are more of these trees in it than any- 
where else in the town that I know. How pleas- 



112 WINTER. 

ing to stand near a new or rare tree ; and few 
are so handsome as this; singularly allied to 
the black birch in its sweet checkerberry scent 
and its form, and to the canoe birch in its peel- 
ing or fringed and tasseled bark. The top is 
brush-like as in the black birch. The bark an 
exquisite . . . delicate gold color, curled off partly 
from the trunk with vertical clear or smooth 
spaces, as if a plane had been passed up the 
tree. The sight of these trees affects me more 
than California gold. I measured one five and 
two twelfths feet in circumference at six feet 
from the ground. We have the silver and the 
golden birch. This is like a fair, flaxen-haired 
sister of the dark-complexioned black birch, with 
golden ringlets. How lustily it takes hold of 
the swampy soil and braces itself. And here 
flows a dark cherry-wood or wine-colored brook 
over the iron-red sands in the sombre swamp, 
swampy wine. In an undress, this tree. Ah, 
the time will come when these will be all gone. 
Among the primitive trees. What sort of dryads 
haunt these ? Blonde nymphs. Near by, the 
great pasture oaks with horizontal boughs. At 
Pratt's, the stupendous boughy branching elm, 
like vast thunderbolts stereotyped upon the sky, 
heaven-defying, sending back dark, vegetable 
bolts, as if flowing back in the channel of the 
lightning. — The white oaks have a few leaves 



WINTER. 113 

about the crown of the trunk, in the lower part 
of the tree, like a tree within a tree. The tree 
is thus less wracked by the wind and ice. — In 
the twilight I went through the swamp, and the 
yellow birches sent forth a yellow gleam which 
each time made my heart beat faster. Occasion- 
ally you come to a dead and leaning white birch, 
beset with large fungi like ears or little shelves, 
with a rounded edge above. I walked with the 
yellow birch. The prinos is green within. If 
there were Druids whose temples were the oak 
groves, my temple is the swamp. Sometimes I 
was in doubt about a birch whose vest was but- 
toned, smooth and dark, till I came nearer and 
saw the yellow gleaming through, or where a 
button was off. 

Jan. 4, 1857. . . . After spending four or 
five days surveying and drawing a plan, inces- 
santly, I especially feel the need of putting my- 
self in communication with nature again to re- 
cover my tone, to withdraw out of the wearying 
and unprofitable world of affairs. The things I 
have been doing have but a fleeting and acci- 
dental importance, however much men are im- 
mersed in them, and yield very little valuable 
fruit. I would fain have been wading through 
the woods and fields, and conversing with the 
sane snow. Having waded in the very shallowest 
stream of time, I would now bathe my temples 



114 WINTER. 

in eternity. I wish again to participate in the 
serenity of nature, to share the happiness of the 
river and the woods. I thus from time to time 
break off my connection with eternal truths, and 
go with the shallow stream of human affairs, 
grinding at the mill of the Philistines. But 
when my task is done, with never - failing confi- 
dence, I devote myself to the infinite again. It 
would be sweet to deal with men more, I can 
imagine, but where dwell they? Not in the 
fields which I traverse. 

Jan. 4, 1858. . . . That bright and warm re- 
flection of sunlight from the insignificant edging 
of stubble was remarkable. I was coming down 
stream over the meadow on the ice, within four 
or five rods of the eastern shore, the sun on my 
left about a quarter of an hour above the hori- 
zon. The ice was soft and sodden, of a dull 
lead color, quite dark and reflecting no light, as 
I looked eastward, but my eyes caught, by acci- 
dent, a singular, sunny brightness, reflected from 
the narrow border of stubble only three or four 
inches high, and as many feet wide perhaps, 
which rose along the edge of the ice at the foot 
of the hill. It was not a mere brightening of 
the bleached stubble, but the warm and yellow 
light of the sun, which, as appeared, it was pecul- 
iarly fitted to reflect. It was that amber light 
from the west which we sometimes witness after 



WINTER. 115 

a storm, concentrated on the stubble, for the 
hill beyond was merely a dark russet, spotted 
with snow. All the yellow rays seemed to be 
reflected by this insignificant stubble alone, and 
when I looked more generally a little above it, see- 
ing it with the under part of my eye, . . . the 
reflected light made its due impression . . . sep- 
arated from the proper color of the stubble, and 
it glowed almost like a low, steady, and serene 
fire. It was precisely as if the sunlight had 
mechanically slid over the ice, and lodged 
against the stubble. It will be enough to say of 
something warmly and sunnily bright, that it 
glowed like lit stubble. It was remarkable that 
looking eastward this was the only evidence o£ 
the light in the west. 

Jan. 5, 1841. I grudge to the record that 
lavish expenditure of love and grace which are 
due rather to the spoken thought. A man 
writes because he has no opportunity to speak. 
Why should he be the only mute creature, and 
his speech no part of the melody of the grove ? 
He never gladdens the ear of nature, and ushers 
in no spring with his lays. — We are more anx- 
ious to speak than to be heard. 

Jan. 5, 1842. I find that, whatever hindrances 
occur, I write just about the same amount of 
truth in my journal, for the record is more con- 
centrated, and usually it is some very real and 



116 WINTER. 

earnest life that interrupts. All flourishes are 
omitted. If I saw wood from morning to night, 
though I grieve that I could not observe the 
train of my thoughts during that time, yet in the 
evening, the few scrawled lines which describe 
my day's occupation will make the creaking of 
the saw more musical than my freest fancies 
could have been. . . . 

I discover in Raleigh's verses the vices of the 
courtier. They are not equally sustained, as if 
his noble genius were warped by the frivolous 
society of the court. He was capable of rising 
to a remarkable elevation. His poetry has for 
the most part a heroic tone and vigor, as of a 
knight errant. But again there seems to have 
been somewhat unkindly in his education, as if 
he had by no means grown up to be the man he 
promised. He was apparently too genial and 
loyal a soul, or rather he was incapable of resist- 
ing temptation from that quarter. If to his 
genius and culture he could have added the tem- 
perament of Fox or Cromwell, the world would 
have had cause longer to remember him. . . . 
One would have said it was by some lucky fate 
that he and Shakespeare flourished at the 
same time in England, and yet what do we know 
of their acquaintanceship ? 

Jan. 5, 1852. To-day the trees are white 
with snow, — I mean their stems and branches, — 



WINTER. 117 

and have the true wintry look on the storm side. 
Not till this has winter come to the forest. It 
looks like the small frost-work in the path and 
on the windows now, especially the oak woods at 
a distance, and you see better the form which 
the branches take. That is a picture of winter; 
and now you may put a cottage under the trees 
and roof it with snow-drifts, and let the smoke 
curl up amid the boughs in the morning. 

It was a dark day, the heavens shut out with 
dense snow clouds, and the trees wetting me 
with the melting snow, when going through 

B 's wood on Fair Haven, which they are 

cutting off, and suddenly looking between the 
stems of the trees, I thought I saw an extensive 
fire in the western horizon. It was a bright, 
coppery yellow fair weather cloud along the edge 
of the horizon, gold with some alloy of copper, 
in such contrast with the remaining clouds as to 
suggest nothing less than fire. On that side, 
the clouds which covered our day, low in the 
horizon, with a dim and smoke-like edge, were 
rolled up like a curtain with heavy folds, reveal- 
ing this further bright curtain beyond. 

Jan. 5, 1854. . . . This afternoon, as prob- 
ably yesterday, it being warm and thawing, 
though fair, the snow is covered with snow fleas. 
Especially they are sprinkled like pepper for 
half a mile in the tracks of a wood -chopper in 



118 WINTER. 

deep snow. With the first thawing weather 
they come. — There is also some blueness now 
in the snow, the heavens being toward night 
overcast. The blueness is more distinct after 
sunset. 

' Jan. 5, 1855. [Worcester.] a. m. Walked 
to southerly end of Quinsigamond Pond via 
Quinsigamond Village, and returned by floating 
bridge. Saw the straw-built wigwam of an In- 
dian from St. Louis (Rapids?), Canada, appar- 
ently a half-breed. Not being able to buy 
straw, he had made it chiefly of dry grass which 
he had cut in a meadow with his knife. It was 
against a bank, and partly of earth all round. 
The straw or grass laid on horizontal poles, and 
kept down by similar ones outside, like our 
thatching. Makes them of straw often in Can- 
ada, can make one, if he has the straw, in one 
day. The door, on hinges, was of straw also, 
put on perpendicularly, pointed at top to fit the 
roof. The roof steep, six or eight inches thick. 
He was making baskets, wholly of sugar maple ; 
could find no black ash. Sewed or bound the 
edge with maple also. Did not look up once 
while we were there. There was a fire-place of 
stone running out on one side, and covered with 
earth. It was the nest of a large meadow 
mouse. Had he ever hunted moose ? When he 
was down at Green Island. Where was that ? 



WINTER. 119 

Oh, far down, very far ; caught seals there. No 
books down that way. \ . . 

R. W. E. told of Mr. Hill, his classmate, of 
Bangor, who was much interested in my " Wal- 
den," but relished it merely as a capital satire 
and joke, and even thought that the survey and 
map of the pond were not real, but a caricature 
of the Coast Survey. 
"^ Jan. 5, 1856. ... The thin snow now driv- 
ing from the north and lodging on my coat con- 
sists of those beautiful star crystals, not cottony 
and chubby spokes as on the 13th of December, 
but thin and partly transparent crystals. They 
are about one tenth of an inch in diameter, per- 
fect little wheels with six spokes, without a tire, 
or rather with six perfect little leaflets, fern-like, 
with a distinct, straight, slender, midrib, raying 
from the centre. On each side of each midrib 
there is a transparent, thin blade with a crenate 
edge. How full of the creative genius is the air 
in which these are generated ! I should hardly 
admire more, if real stars fell and lodged on my 
coat. Nature is full of genius, full of the divin- 
ity, so that not a snow-flake escapes its fashion- 
ing hand. Nothing is cheap and coarse, neither 
dew-drops nor snow-flakes. Soon the storm in- 
creases (it was already very severe to face), and 
the snow comes finer, more white and powdery. 
— Who knows but this is the original form of 



120 WINTER. 

all snow-flakes, but that, when I observe these 
crystal stars falling around me, they are only 
just generated in the low mist next the earth. 
I am nearer to the source of the snow, its primal, 
auroral, and golden hour or infancy ; commonly 
the flakes reach us travel-worn and agglomer- 
ated, comparatively without order or beauty, far 
down in their fall, like men in their advanced 
age. As for the circumstances under which 
this phenomenon occurs, it is quite cold, and the 
driving storm is bitter to face, though very little 
snow is falling. It comes almost horizontally 
from the north. ... A divinity must have stirred 
within them, before the crystals did thus shoot 
and set. Wheels of the storm chariots. The 
same law that shapes the earth and the stars 
shapes the snow-flake. Call it rather snow star. 
As surely as the petals of a flower are numbered, 
each of these countless snow stars comes whirl- 
ing to earth, pronouncing thus with emphasis 
the number six, order, Koafxos. This was the be- 
ginning of a storm which reached far and wide, 
and elsewhere was more severe than here. On 
the Saskatchewan, where no man of science is 
present to behold, still down they come, and not 
the less fulfill their destiny, perchance melt at 
once on the Indian's face. What a world we 
live in, where myriads of these little disks, so 
beautiful to the most prying eye, are whirled 



WINTER. 121 

down on every traveler's coat, the observant and 
the unobservant, on the restless squirrel's fur, 
on the far-stretching fields and forests, the 
wooded dells and the mountain tops. Far, far 
away from the haunts of men, they roll down 
some little slope, fall over and come to their 
bearings, and melt or lose their beauty in the 
mass, ready anon to swell some little rill with 
their contribution, and so, at last, the universal 
ocean from which they came. There they lie, 
like the wreck of chariot wheels after a battle in 
the skies. Meanwhile the meadow mouse shoves 
them aside in his gallery, the school -boy casts 
them in his snow-ball, or the woodman's sled 
glides smoothly over them, these glorious span- 
gles, the sweepings of heaven's floor. And 
they all sing, melting as they sing, of the myster- 
ies of the number six; six, six, six. He takes 
up the waters of the sea in his hand, leaving the 
salt ; he disperses it in mist through the skies ; 
he re-collects and sprinkles it like grain in six- 
rayed snowy stars over the earth, there to lie till 
he dissolves its bonds again. 

Jan. 5, 1859. As I go over the causeway 
near the railroad bridge, I hear a fine, busy 
twitter, and looking up, see a nuthatch hopping 
along and about a swamp white oak branch, in- 
specting every side of it, as readily hanging 
head downwards as standing upright, and then 



h 



122 WINTER. 

it utters a distinct quah, as if to attract a com- 
panion. Indeed, that other finer twitter seemed 
designed to keep some companion in tow, or else 
it was like a very busy man talking to himself. 
The companion was a single chickadee, which 
lisped six or eight feet off. There were perhaps 
no other birds than these within a quarter of 
a mile. When the nuthatch flitted to another 
tree two rods off, the chickadee unfailingly fol- 
lowed. 

Jan. 5, 1860. ... A man receives only what 
he is ready to receive, whether physically, or in- 
tellectually, or morally, as animals conceive their 
kind at certain seasons only. We hear and ap- 
prehend only what we already half know. If 
there is something which does not concern me, 
which is out of my line, which by experience or 
by genius my attention is not drawn to, however 
novel and remarkable it may be, if it is spoken, 
I hear it not, if it is written, I read it not, or if 
I read it, it does not detain me. Every man 
thus tracks himself through life, in all his hear- 
ing and reading and observation and travel- 
ing. His observations make a chain. The 
phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be 
linked with the rest which he has observed, he 
does not observe. By and by we may be ready 
to receive what we cannot receive now. I find, 
for example, in Aristotle something about the 



WINTER. 123 

spawning, etc., of the pont and perch, because I 
know something about it already, and have my 
attention aroused, but I do not discover till very 
late that he has made other equally important 
observations on the spawning of other fishes, 
because I am not interested in those fishes. 

Jan. 6, 1838. As a child looks forward to the 
coming of the summer, so could we contemplate 
with quiet joy the circle of the seasons return- 
ing without fail eternally. As the spring came 
round during so many years of the gods, we 
could go out to admire and adorn anew our 
Eden, and yet never tire. 

Jan. 6, 1841. We are apt to imagine that 
this hubbub of Philosophy, Literature, and Re- 
ligion, which is heard in pulpits, Lyceums, and 
parlors, vibrates through the universe, and is as 
catholic a sound as the creaking of the earth's 
axle. But if a man sleeps soundly, he will 
forget it all between sunset and dawn. It is 
the three-inch swing of some pendulum in a 
cupboard, which the great pulse of Nature 
vibrates clearly through each instant. When 
we lift our lids and open our ears, it disappears 
with smoke and rattle, like the cars on the rail- 
road. 

Jan. 6, 1857. ... A man asked me the 
other night whether such and such persons were 
not as happy as anybody, being conscious, as I 






124 WINTER. 

perceived, of much unhappiness himself and not 
aspiring to much more than an animal content. 
Why, said I, speaking to his condition, the 
stones are happy, Concord River is happy, and I 
am happy too. When I took up a fragment of 
a walnut shell this morning, I saw by its grain 
and composition, its form and color, etc., that it 
was made for happiness. The most brutish and 
inanimate objects that are made suggest an 
everlasting and thorough satisfaction. They 
are the homes of content. Wood, earth, mould, 
etc., exist for joy. Do you think that Concord 
River would have continued to flow these mil- 
lions of years by Clamshell Hill, and round 
Hunt's Island, if it had not been happy, if it 
had been miserable in its channel, tired of exist- 
ence, and cursing its maker and the hour when 
it sprang. 

Jan. 6, 1858. ... I derive a certain excite- 
ment not to be refused even from going through 
Dennis's swamp on the opposite side of the 
railroad, where the poison dogwood abounds. 
This simple-stemmed bush is very full of fruit, 
hanging in loose, dry, pale green, drooping 
panicles. Some of them are a foot long. It 
impresses me as the most fruitful shrub there- 
abouts. I cannot refrain from plucking it, and 
bringing home some fruitful sprigs. Other 
fruits are there which belong to the hard season, 



WINTER. 125 

the enduring panicle d andronieda, and a few 
partly decayed prinos berries. I walk amid the 
bare midribs of cinnamon ferns, with at most a 
terminal leafet, and here and there I see a little 
dark water at the bottom of a dimple in the 
snow over which the snow has not yet been able 
to prevail. — I was feeling very cheap, never- 
theless, reduced to make the most of my dog- 
wood berries. Very little evidence of \ the di- 
vine did I see just then, and life was not as rich 
and inviting an enterprise as it should be, when 
my attention was caught by a snow-flake on my 
coat sleeve. It was one of those perfect, crys- 
talline, star-shaped ones, six rayed, like a flat 
wheel with six spokes, only the spokes were per- 
fect little pine trees in shape, arranged around 
a central spangle. This little object which, with 
many of its fellows, rested unmelting on my 
coat, so perfect and beautiful, reminded me that 
virtue had not lost her pristine vigor yet, and 
why should man lose heart ? Sometimes the 
pines were worn, and had lost their branches, 
and again it appeared as if several stars had 
impinged on one another at various angles, mak- 
ing a somewhat spherical mass. . . . There were 
mingled with these starry flakes small downy 
pellets also. . . . We are rained and snowed on 
with gems. I confess that I was a little en- 
couraged, for I was beginning to believe that 



126 " WINTER. 

Nature was poor and mean, and I was now con- 
vinced that she turned off as good work as ever. 
What a world we live in ! Where are the jewel- 
ers' shops ? There is nothing handsomer than a 
snow-flake and a dew-drop. I may say that the 
maker of the world exhausts his skill with each 
snow-flake and dew-drop that he sends down. 
We think that the one mechanically coheres, 
and that the other simply flows together and 
falls, but in truth they are the product of enthu- 
siasm, the children of an ecstasy, finished with 
the artist's utmost skill. 

Jan. 6, 1859. p. m. To Martial Miles's. . . . 
Miles had hanging in his barn a little owl, Strix 
Acadica, which he caught alive with his hands 
about a week ago. He had induced it to eat, 
but it died. It was a funny little brown bird, 
spotted with white, seven and one half inches long 
to the end of the tail, or eight to the end of the 
claws, and nineteen in alar extent, not so long 
by a considerable as a robin, though much 
stouter. This one had three (not two, and 
Nuttall says three) white bars on its tail, but 
no noticeable white at the tip. Its cunning feet 
were feathered quite to the extremity of the 
toes, looking like whitish mice, or as when one 
pulls stockings over his boots. As usual, the 
white spots on the upper sides of the wings are 
smaller and a more distinct white, while those 



WINTER. 127 

beneath are much larger, but a subdued, satiny- 
white. Even a bird's wing has an upper and 
an under side, and the last admits only of more 
subdued and tender colors. 

Jan. 7, 1851. . . . The knowledge of an un- 
learned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, 
but covered with mosses and lichens, and for the 
most part inaccessible and going to waste ; the 
knowledge of the man of science is like timber 
collected in yards for public works, which still 
supports a green sprout here and there, but even 
this is liable to dry rot. 

I felt my spirits rise when I had got out of 
the road into the open fields, and the sky had a 
new appearance. I stepped along more buoy- 
antly. There was a warm sunset in the wooded 
valleys, a yellowish tinge on the pines. Red- 
dish dun-colored clouds, like dusky flames, stood 
over it, and then streaks of blue sky were seen 
here and there. The life, the joy that is in blue 
sky after a storm. There is no account of the 
blue sky in history. Before, I walked in the 
ruts of travel, now I adventured. . . . 

If I have any conversation with a scamp in 
my walk, my afternoon is wont to be spoiled. 

Jan. 7, 1852. . . . Now ... I see the sun 
descending into the west. There is something 
new, a snow bow in the east, on the snow clouds, 
merely a white bow, hardly any color distin- 



128 WINTER. 

guishable. But in the west what inconceivable 
crystalline purity of blue sky, . . . and I see 
feathery clouds on this ground, some traveling 
north, others directly in the opposite direction, 
though apparently close together. Some of 
these cloudlets are waifs and droppings from 
rainbows, clear rainbow through and through, 
spun out of the fibre of the rainbow, or rather 
as if the children of the west had been pulling 
rainbow (instead of tow), that had done ser- 
vice, old junk of rainbow, and cast it into flocks. 
And then such fantastic, feathery scrawls of 
gauze-like vapor on this elysian ground ! We 
never tire of the drama of sunset. I go forth 
each afternoon and look into the west a quarter 
of an hour before sunset with fresh curiosity to 
see what new picture will be painted there, 
what new phenomenon exhibited, what new dis- 
solving views. . . . Every day a new picture is 
painted and framed, held up for half an hour in 
such lights as the great artist chooses, and then 
withdrawn and the curtain falls. The sun goes 
down, long the after-glow gives light, the dam- 
ask curtains glow along the western window, the 
first star is lit, and I go home. 

Jan. 7, 1853. To Nawshawtuck. This is one 
of those pleasant winter mornings when you 
find the river firmly frozen in the night, but still 
the air is serene and the sun feels gratefully 



WINTER, 129 

warm an hour after sunrise. Though so fair, 
... a whitish vapor fills the lower stratum of 
the air concealing the mountains. The smokes 
go up from the village, you hear the cocks with 
immortal vigor, the children shout on their way 
to school, and the sound made by the railroad 
men hammering a rail is uncommonly musical. 
This promises a perfect winter day. In the 
heavens, except the altitude of the sun, you have, 
as it were, the conditions of summer, perfect 
serenity and clarity, and sonorousness in the 
earth. All nature is but braced by the cold. 
It gives tension to both body and mind. . . . 

About ten minutes before 10 A. M. I heard 
a very loud sound, and felt a violent jar which 
made the house rock and the loose articles on 
my table rattle. I knew it must be either a 
powder mill blown up or an earthquake. Not 
knowing but another and more violent shock 
might take place, I immediately ran down-stairs. 
I saw from the door a vast expanding column of 
whitish smoke rising in the west directly over 
the powder mills four miles distant. It was 
unfolding its volumes above, which made it 
wider there. In three or four minutes it had 
all risen and spread itself into a lengthening, 
somewhat copper-colored cloud, parallel with the 
horizon from N. to S., and in about ten min- 
utes after the explosion, it passed over my head, 



130 WINTER. 

being several miles long from N. to S., and 
distinctly dark and smoky toward the N., not 
nearly so high as the few cirrhi in the sky. 
Jumped into a man's wagon and rode toward 
the mills. In a few moments more, I saw 
behind me, far in the E., a faint, salmon-col- 
ored cloud carrying the news of the explosion 
to the sea, and perchance over the head of the 
absent proprietor. Arrived probably before 
half-past ten. There were perhaps thirty or 
forty wagons there. The kernel mill had blown 
up first, and killed three men who were in it, 
said to be turning a roller with a chisel. In 
three seconds after, one of the mixing houses 
exploded. The kernel house was swept away, 
and fragments, mostly but a foot or two in 
length, were strewn over the hills and meadows 
for thirty rods. The slight snow on the ground 
was for the most part melted around. The 
mixing house about ten rods W. was not so 
completely dispersed, for most of the machinery 
remained a total wreck. The press house about 
twelve rods E. had two thirds of its boards off, 
and a mixing house next westward from that 
which blew up had lost some boards on the E. 
side. The boards fell out (i. e., of those build- 
ings which did not blow up), the air within 
apparently rushing out to fill up the vacuum 
occasioned by the explosions. So the powder 



WINTER. 131 

being bared to the fiery particles in the air, the 
building explodes. The powder on the floor of 
the bared press house was six inches deep in some 
places, and the crowd were thoughtlessly going 
into it. A few windows were broken thirty or 
forty rods off. Timber six inches square and 
eighteen feet long was thrown a dozen rods over 
a hill eighty feet high at least. Thirty rods was 
about the limit of fragments. The drying house, 
in which was a fire, was perhaps twent^five rods 
distant and escaped. . . . Some of the clothes 
of the men were in the tops of the trees where 
undoubtedly their bodies had been and left 
them. . . . Put the different buildings thirty 
rods apart, and then but one will blow up at a 
time. 

Jan. 7, 1854. p. m. To Ministerial Swamp. 
... I went to these woods partly to hear an 
owl, but did not. Now that I have left them 
nearly a mile behind, I hear one distinctly, 
hoorer hoo. Strange that we should hear this 
sound so often, yet so rarely see the bird, often- 
est at twilight. It has a singular prominence 
as a sound. ... It is a sound which the wood 
or the horizon makes. 

Jan. 7, 1855. . . . Cloudy and misty. On 
opening the door I feel a very warm southwest- 
erly wind contrasting with the cooler air of the 
house, and find it unexpectedly wet in the street. 



132 WINTER. 

It is in fact a January thaw. The channel of 
the river is quite open in many places, and in 
others I remark that the ice and water alter- 
nate like waves and the hollow between them. 
There are long reaches of open water where I 
look for muskrats and ducks as I go along to 
Clamshell Hill. I hear the pleasant sound of 
running water. . . . The delicious, soft, spring- 
suggesting air, how it fills my veins with life. 
Life becomes again credible to me. A certain 
dormant life awakes in me, and I begin to love 
nature again. Here is my Italy, my heaven, 
my New England. I understand why the In- 
dians hereabouts placed heaven in the S. W. 
The soft south. On the slopes, the ground is 
laid bare, and radical leaves revealed, crowfoot, 
shepherd's purse, clover, etc., a fresh green, and, 
in the meadow, the skunk-cabbage buds with a 
bluish bloom, and the red leaves of the meadow 
saxifrage. These and the many withered plants 
laid bare remind me of spring and of botany. 
— On the same bare sand is revealed a new crop ' 
of arrow heads. I pick up two perfect ones of 
quartz, sharp as if just from the hand of the 
maker. Still, birds are very rare. Here comes 
a little flock of titmice plainly to keep me com- 
pany, with their black caps and throats making 
them look top-heavy, restlessly hopping along 
the alders with a sharp, clear, lisping note. 



WINTER. 133 

. . . The bank is tinged with a most delicate 
pink or bright flesh color where the beomyces 
rosaceus grows. It is a lichen day. . . . The 
sky seen here and there through the wrack, 
bluish and greenish, and perchance with a vein 
of red in the W., seems like the inside of a 
shell, deserted of its tenant, into which I have 
crawled. The willow catkins began to peep 
from under their scales as early as the 26th 
of last month. Many buds have lost their 
scales. 

Jan. 7, 1857. p. m. To Walden. ... It is 
bitter cold, with a cutting N. W. wind. The pond 
is now a plain snow field, but there are no tracks 
of fishers on it. It is too cold for them. . . . 
All animate things are reduced to their lowest 
terms. This is the fifth day of cold, blowing 
weather. All tracks are concealed in an hour 
or two. Some have to make their paths two or 
three times a day. The fisherman is not here, 
for his lines would freeze in. I go through the 
woods toward the cliffs along the side of the 
Well Meadow field. There is nothing so sana- 
tive, so poetic, as a walk in the woods and fields 
even now, when I meet none abroad for pleas- 
ure. Nothing so inspires me, and excites such 
serene and profitable thought. The objects are 
elevating. In the street and in society I am 
almost invariably cheap and dissipated, my life 



134 WINTER. 

is unspeakably mean. No amount of gold or 
respectability could in the least redeem it, dining 
with the governor or a member of Congress ! ! 
But alone in distant woods or fields, in unpre- 
tending sproutlands or pastures tracked by rab- 
bits, even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day 
like this, when a villager would be thinking of 
his inn, I come to myself, I once more feel my- 
self grandly related. This cold and solitude 
are friends of mine. I suppose that this value, 
in my case, is equivalent to what others get by 
church - going and prayer. I come to my soli- 
tary woodland walk as the homesick go home. 
I thus dispose of the superfluous, and see things 
as they are, grand and beautiful. I have told 
many that I walk every day about half the day- 
light, but I think they do not believe it. I wish 
to get the Concord, the Massachusetts, the Amer- 
ican, out of my head and be sane a part of 
every day. I wish to forget a considerable part 
of every day, all mean, narrow, trivial men (and 
this requires usually to forego and forget all 
personal relations so long), and therefore I come 
out to these solitudes where the problem of ex- 
istence is simplified. I get away a mile or two 
from the town, into the stillness and solitude of 
nature, with rocks, trees, weeds, snow about me. 
I enter some glade in the woods, perchance, 
where a few weeds and dry leaves alone lift 



WINTER. 135 

themselves above the surface of the snow, and it 
is as if I had come to an open window. I see 
out and around myself. Our sky-lights are thus 
far away from the ordinary resorts of men. I 
am not satisfied with ordinary windows. I must 
have a true sky-light, and that is outside the vil- 
lage. I am not thus expanded, recreated, en- 
lightened when I meet a company of men. It 
chances that the sociable, the town and country 
club, the farmers' club does not prove a sky-light 
to me. . . . The man I meet with is not often so 
instructive as the silence he breaks. This still- 
ness, solitude, wildness of nature is a kind of 
thoroughwort or boneset to my intellect. This 
is what I go out to seek. It is as if I always 
met in those places some grand, serene, immor- 
tal, infinitely encouraging, though invisible com- 
panion, and walked with him. There at last my 
nerves are steadied, my senses and my mind do 
their office. I am aware that most of my neigh- 
bors would think it a hardship to be compelled 
to linger here one hour, especially this bleak 
day, and yet I receive this sweet and ineffable 
compensation for it. It is the most agreeable 
thing I do. I love and celebrate nature even in 
detail, because I love the scenery of these inter- 
views and translations. I love to remember 
every creature that was at this club. I thus get 
off a certain social scurf. ... I do not consider 



136 WINTER. 

the other animals brutes in the common sense. 
I am attracted toward them undoubtedly be- 
cause I never heard any nonsense from them. I 
have not convicted them of folly, or vanity, or 
pomposity, or stupidity in dealing with me. 
Their vices, at any rate, do not interfere with 
me. My fairies invariably take to flight when 
a man appears upon the scene. In a caucus, a 
meeting-house, a lyceum, a club-room there is 
nothing like this fine experience for me. But 
away out of the town, on Brown's scrub oak lot, 
which was sold the other day for six dollars an 
acre, I have company such as England cannot 
buy nor afford. This society is what I live, 
what I survey for. I subscribe generously to 
this all that I have and am. There in that 
Well Meadow field, perhaps, I feel in my ele- 
ment again, as when a fish is put back into the 
water. I wash off all my chagrins. All things 
go smoothly as the axle of the universe. 

I can remember that when I was very young I 
used to have a dream night after night, over and 
over again, which might have been named Rough 
and Smooth. All existence, all satisfaction and 
dissatisfaction, all event, was symbolized in 
this way. Now I seemed to be lying and toss- 
ing, perchance, on a horrible, a fatal rough sur- 
face, which must soon indeed put an end to my 
existence (though even in my dream I knew it 



WINTER. 137 

to be the symbol merely of my misery), and 
then again, suddenly, I was lying on a delicious 
smooth surface, as of a summer sea, as of gossa- 
mer or down, or softest plush, and it was a lux- 
ury to live. My waking experience always has 
been and is an alternate Rough and Smooth. In 
other words it is Insanity and Sanity. 

Might I aspire to praise the moderate nymph 
Nature, I must be like her, moderate. 

Jan. 7, 1858. The storm is over, and it is 
one of those beautiful winter mornings when a 
vapor is seen hanging in the air between the 
village and the woods. Though the snow is 
only six inches deep, the yards appear full of 
those beautiful crystals, star or wheel shaped 
flakes, as a measure is full of grain. . . . By ten 
o'clock I notice a very long, level stratum of 
cloud not very high in the S. E. sky (all the rest 
being clear), which I suspect to be the vapor 
from the sea. This lasts for several hours. 

These are true mornings of creation, original 
and poetic days, not mere repetitions of the 
past. There is no lingering of yesterday's fogs, 
only such a mist as might have adorned the first 
morning. 

p. M. I see some tree sparrows feeding on 
the fine grass seed above the snow. They are 
flitting along one at a time, commonly sunk in 
the snow, uttering occasionally a low, sweet war- 



138 WINTER. 

ble, and seemingly as happy there, and with this 
wintry prospect before them for the night and 
several months to come, as any man by his fire- 
side. One occasionally hops or flies toward an- 
other, and the latter suddenly jerks away from 
him. They are searching or hopping up to the 
fine grass, or oftener picking the seeds from the 
snow. At length the whole ten have collected 
within a space a dozen feet square, but soon after, 
being alarmed, they utter a different and less 
musical chirp, and flit away into an apple-tree. 

Jan. 8, 1842. When, as now, in January a 
south wind melts the snow, and the bare ground 
appears covered with sere grass and occasionally 
wilted green leaves, which seem in doubt whether 
to let go their greenness quite or absorb new 
juices against the coming year, in such a season 
a perfume seems to exhale from the earth itself, 
and the south wind melts my integuments also. 
Then is she my mother earth. I derive a real 
vigor from the scent of the gale wafted over the 
naked ground, as from strong meats, and realize 
again how man is the pensioner of nature. We 
are always conciliated and cheered when we are 
fed by an influence, and our needs are felt to be 
part of the domestic economy of nature. 

What offends me most in my compositions is 
the moral element in them. The repentant say 
never a brave word. Their resolves should be 



WINTER. 139 

mumbled in silence. Strictly speaking, moral- 
ity is not healthy. The undeserved joys which 
come uncalled, and make us more pleased than 
grateful, are they that sing. 

In the steadiness and equanimity of music 
lies its divinity. It is the only assured tone. 
When men attain to speak with as settled a 
faith, and as firm assurance, their voices will 
ring and their feet march as do the feet of a 
soldier. The very dogs howl if time is disre- 
garded. Because of the perfect time of this 
music-box, its harmony with itself, is its greater 
dignity and stateliness. This music is more 
nobly related for its more exact measure. So 
simple a difference as this more even pace raises 
it to the higher dignity. . . . What are ears, 
what is time, that this particular series of sounds 
called a strain of music can be wafted down 
through the centuries from Homer to me, and 
Homer have been conversant with that same 
wandering and mysterious charm which never 
had a local habitation in space. ... I feel a sad 
cheer when I hear these lofty strains, because 
there must be something in me as lofty that 
hears. Ah, I hear them but rarely. . . . They 
tell me the secrets of futurity. Where are its 
secrets wound up but in this box ? So much 
hope had slumbered. — There are in music such 
strains as far surpass any faith which man ever 



140 WINTER. 

had in the loftiness of his destiny. He must be 
very sad before he can comprehend them. The 
clear liquid notes from the morning fields beyond 
seem to come through a vale of sadness to man 
which gives to all music a plaintive air. The 
sadness is in the echo which our lives make and 
which alone we hear. Music hath caught a 
higher pace than any virtue that I know. It is 
the arch reformer. It hastens the sun to his 
setting. It invites him to his rising. It is the 
sweetest reproach, a measured satire. I know 
there is somewhere a people where this heroism 
has place. Things are to be learned which it 
will be sweet to learn. This cannot be all 
rumor. When I hear this, I think of that ever- 
lasting something which is not mere sound, but 
is to be a thrilling reality, and I can consent to 
go about the meanest work for as many years of 
time as it pleases the Hindoo penance, for a year 
of the gods were as nothing to that which shall 
come after. What, then, can I do to hasten that 
other time, or that space where there shall be no 
time, and where these things shall be a more 
living part of my life, where there will be no 
discords in my life ? 

Jan. 8, 1851. . . . The light of the setting 
sun falling on the snow banks to-day made them 
glow almost yellow. — The hills seen from Fair 
Haven Pond make a wholly new landscape. 



WINTER. 141 

Covered with snow and yellowish green or brown 
pines, and shrub oaks, they look higher and 
more massive. Their white mantle relates them 
to the clouds in the horizon and to the sky. 
Perhaps what is light-colored looks loftier than 
what is dark. 

Jan. 8, 1852. . . . Even as early as 3 o'clock 
these winter afternoons the axes in the woods 
sound like night -fall, as if it were the sound 
of a twilight labor. 

Reading from my MSS. to Miss Emerson this 
evening and using the word god, in one instance, 
in perchance a merely heathenish sense, she in- 
quired hastily in a tone of dignified anxiety, 
"Is that god spelt with a little g?" Fortu- 
nately it was. (I had brought in the word god 
without any solemnity of voice or connection.) 
So I went on as if nothing had happened. 

Jan. 8, 1854. . . . Stood within a rod of a 
downy woodpecker on an apple - tree. How 
curious and exciting the blood-red spot on its 
hind head ! I ask why it is there, but no 
answer is rendered by these snow-clad fields. It 
is so close to the bark I do not see its feet. It 
looks behind as it had a black cassock open 
behind and showing a white under-garment be- 
tween the shoulders and down the back. It is 
briskly and incessantly tapping all round the 
dead limbs, but hardly twice in a place, as if to 



142 WINTER. 

sound the tree, and so see if it has any worm in 
it, or perchance to start them. How much he 
deals with the bark of trees, all his life long tap- 
ping and inspecting it. He it is that scatters 
these fragments of bark and lichens about on the 
snow at the base of trees. What a lichenest he 
must be! or rather perhaps it is fungi make his 
favorite study, for he deals most with dead limbs. 
How briskly he glides up or drops himself down 
a limb, creeping round and round, and hopping 
from limb to limb, and now flitting with a rip- 
pling sound of his wings to another tree. 

Jan. 8, 1857. ... I picked up on the bare 
ice of the river ... a furry caterpillar, black 
at the two ends and red-brown in the middle, 
rolled into a ball or close ring, like a woodchuck. 
I pressed it hard between my fingers and found 
it frozen, put it into my hat, and when I took it 
out in the evening, it soon began to stir, and at 
length crawled about} though a portion of it 
seemed not quite flexible. It took some time 
for it to thaw. This is the fifth cold day, and 
it must have been frozen so long. 

Jan. 8, 1860. . . . To-day it is very warm 
and pleasant. 2 P. M. Walk to Walden. . . . 
After December all weather that is not wintry 
is spring-like. How changed are our feelings 
and thoughts by this more genial sky ! When I 
get to the railroad, I listen from time to time to 



WINTER. 143 

hear some sound out of the distance which will 
express the mood of nature. The cock and the 
hen, that pheasant which we have domesticated, 
are perhaps the most sensitive among domestic 
animals to atmospheric chauges. You cannot 
listen a moment such a day as this, but you will 
hear from far or near the clarion of the cock 
celebrating this new season, yielding to the in- 
fluence of the south wind, or the drawling note 
of the hen dreaming of eggs that are to be. 
These are the sounds that fill the air, and no 
hum of insects. They are affected like voyagers 
approaching the land. We discover a new 
world every time we see the earth again, after it 
has been covered for a season with snow. 

Jan. 8, 1861. . . . The Indians taught us not 
only the use of corn and how to plant it, but 
also of whortleberries and how to dry them for 
winter, and made us baskets to put them in. 
We should have hesitated long to eat some kinds 
of berries, if they had not set us the example, 
having learned by long experience that they 
were not only harmless, but salutary. I have 
added a few to my number of edible ones by 
walking behind an Indian in Maine who ate 
such as I never thought of eating before. Of 
course they made a much greater account of wild 
fruits than we do. What we call huckleberry 
cake made of Indian meal and huckleberries was 



144 WINTER. 

evidently the principal cake of the aborigines, 
and was generally known and used by them all 
over this par,t of North America, as much as or 
more than plum cake by us. They enjoyed it 
ages before our ancestors heard of Indian meal 
or huckleberries. If you had traveled here one 
thousand years ago, it would probably have been 
offered you alike on the Connecticut, the Poto- 
mac, the Niagara, the Ottawa, and the Missis- 
sippi. It appears . . . that the Indian used 
the dried berries commonly in the form of 
huckleberry cake, and also of huckleberry por- 
ridge or pudding. We have no national cake so 
universal and well known as this was in all parts 
of the country where corn and huckleberries 
grew. 

Jan. 9, 1841. Each hearty stroke we deal 
with these outward hands slays an inward foe. 

Jan. 9, 1842. One cannot too soon forget his 
errors and misdemeanors. To dwell long upon 
them is to add to the offense. Repentance and 
sorrow can only be displaced by something better, 
which is as free and original as if they had not 
been. Not to grieve long for any action, but to 
go immediately and do freshly and otherwise, 
subtracts so much from the wrong ; else we may 
make the delay of repentance the punishment of 
the sin. A great soul will not consider its sins as 
its own, but be more absorbed in the prospect of 



WINTER. 145 

that valor and virtue for the future which is 
more properly itself, than in these improper 
actions which by being sins discover themselves 
to be not itself. 

Sir Walter Raleigh's faults are those of a 
courtier and a soldier. In his counsels and 
aphorisms we see not unf requently the haste and 
rashness of a boy. His philosophy was not 
wide nor deep, but continually giving way to 
the generosity of his nature. What he touches 
he adorns by his greater humanity and native 
nobleness, but he touches not the true and origi- 
nal. . . . He seems to have been fitted by his 
genius for short flights of impulsive poetry, but 
not for the sustained loftiness of Shakespeare 
or Milton. He was not wise nor a seer in any 
sense, but rather one of nature's nobility, the 
most generous nature which can be found to 
linger in the purlieus of a court. — His was a 
singularly perverted genius, with a great incli- 
nation to originality and freedom, and yet who 
never steered his own course. Of so fair and 
susceptible a nature, rather than broad or deep, 
that he lingered to slake his thirst at the 
nearest and even somewhat turbid wells of truth 
and beauty. His homage to the less fair or 
noble left no space for homage to the all fair. 
The misfortune of his circumstances or rather of I 
the man appears in the fact that he was the 



146 WINTER. 

author of " Maxims of State," " The Cabinet 
Council," and " The Soul's Errand." 

Jan. 9, 1852. . . . Where a path has been 
shoveled through drifts in the road, I see . . . 
little heavens in the crannies and crevices. The 
deeper they are, and the larger masses they are 
surrounded by, the darker blue they are. Some 
are a very light blue with a tinge of green. 
Methinks I oftenest see this when it is snowing. 
At any rate, the atmosphere must be in a pecul- 
iar state. Apparently the snow absorbs the 
other rays, and reflects the blue. It has strained 
the air, and only the blue rays have passed 
through the sieve. . . . Into every track which 
the teamster makes this elysian, empyrean at- 
mosphere rushes. 

Jan. 9, 1853. 3 p. M. To Walden and 
Cliffs. The telegraph harp again. Always the 
same unrememberable revelation it is to me. 
I never hear it without thinking of Greece. 
How the Greeks harped upon the words, immor- 
tal, ambrosial. They are what it says. It 
stings my ear with everlasting truth. It allies 
Concord to Athens, and both to Elysium. It 
always . . . makes me sane, reverses my views 
of things. I get down the railroad till I hear 
that which makes all the world a lie. When 
the . . . west wind sweeps this wire, I rise to 
the height of my being. . . . This wire is my 



WINTER. 147 

redeemer. It always brings a special and a gen- 
eral message to me from the highest. Day 
before yesterday I looked at the mangled and 
blackened bodies of men which had been blown 
up by powder, and felt that the lives of men are 
not innocent, and that there was an avenging 
power in nature. To-day I hear this immortal 
melody while the west wind is blowing balmily 
on my cheek and a roseate sunset seems to be 
preparing. . . . 

As I climbed the cliff, I paused in the sun 
and sat on a dry rock, dreaming. I thought of 
those summery hours, when time is tinged with 
eternity, runs into it, and becomes of one stuff 
with it, how much, how perhaps all that is best 
in our experience in middle life, may be resolved 
into the memory of our youth ! Pulling up the 
Johnswort on the face of the cliff, I am sur- 
prised to see the signs of unceasing growth 
about the roots, fresh shoots two inches long, 
white with red leafets, and all the radical part 
quite green. The leaves of the crowfoot also 
are quite green, and carry me forward to spring. 
I dig one up with a stick, and pulling it to 
pieces, I find deep in the centre of the plant, 
just beneath the ground, surrounded by all the 
tender leaves that are to precede it, the blossom 
bud about half as big as the head of a pin, per- 
fectly white. (?) (I open one next day, and it is 



148 WINTER. 

yellow.) There it patiently sits and slumbers, 
how full of faith, informed of a spring which the 
world has never seen, the promise and prophecy 
of it, shaped somewhat like some Eastern tem- 
ples in which a bud-shaped dome o'ertops the 
whole. It affected me this tender dome-like 
bud within the bosom of the earth, like a temple 
upon its surface resounding with the worship of 
votaries. Methought I saw the priests with 
yellow robes within it. . . . It will go forth in 
April, this vestal, now cherishing here her fire, 
to be married to the sun. How innocent are 
nature's purposes ! How unambitious ! 

I saw to-day the reflected sunset sky in the 
river, but the colors in the reflection were differ- 
ent from those in the sky. In the latter were 
dark clouds with coppery or dun-colored under- 
sides ; in the water were dun-colored clouds 
with bluish-green patches or bars. 

Jan. 9, 1855. What a strong and hearty, 
but reckless, hit-or-miss style had some of the 
early writers of New England, like J osselyn and 
William Wood, and others elsewhere in those 
days ; as if they spoke with a relish, smacking 
their lips like a coach whip, caring more to 
speak heartily than scientifically true. They 
are not to be caught napping by the wonders of 
nature in a new country, and perhaps are often 
more ready to appreciate them than she is to 



WINTER. 149 

exhibit thein. They give you one piece of 
nature at any rate, and that is themselves. . . . 
The strong new soil speaks through them. I 
have just been reading somewhat in Wood's 
" New England's Prospect." He speaks a good 
word for New England, indeed will come very 
near lying for her, and when he doubts the just- 
ness of his praise, he brings it out not the less 
soundly ; as who cares if it is not so, we love her 
not the less for all that. Certainly that genera- 
tion stood nearer to nature, nearer to the facts 
than this, and hence their books have more life 
in them. 

Jan. 9, 1858. Snows again. . . . The snow 
is very moist, with large flakes. Looking to- 
ward Trillium wood, the nearer flakes appear to 
move quite swiftly, often making the impression 
of a continuous white line. They are also seen 
to move directly, and nearly horizontally. But 
the more distant flakes appear to loiter in the 
air, as if uncertain how they will approach the 
earth, or even to cross the course of the former, 
and are always seen as simple and distinct 
flakes. I think that this difference is simply 
owing to the fact that the former pass quickly 
over the field of view, while the latter are much 
longer in it. 

Jan. 9, 1860. . . . I hear that , a rich 

old farmer, who lives in a large house, with a 



150 WINTER. 

male housekeeper, and no other family, gets up 
at three or four o'clock these winter mornings, 
and milks seventeen cows regularly. When 
asked why he works so hard, he answers that 
the poor are obliged to work hard. Only 
think what a creature of fate he is, this old 
Jotun, milking his seventeen cows, though the 
thermometer goes down to — 25°, and not know- 
ing why he does it. . . . Think how helpless, 
a rich man who can only do as he has done 
and as his neighbors do, one or all of them. 
What an account he will have to give of him- 
self ! He spent some time in a world, alternately 
cold and warm, and every winter morning with 
lantern in hand, when the first goblins were 
playing their tricks, he resolutely accomplished 
his task, milked his seventeen cows, while the 
man-housekeeper prepared his breakfast. . . . 
Think how tenaciously every man does his deed 
of some kind or other, though it be idleness ! 
He is rich, dependent on nobody, and nobody is 
dependent on him, has as good health as the 
average, at least, can do as he pleases, as we 
say, yet he gravely rises every morning by can- 
dle-light, dons his cowhide boots and his frock, 
takes his lantern, and wends his way to the barn 
and milks his seventeen cows, milking with one 
hand, while he warms the other against the cow 
or his person. This is but the beginning of his 



WINTER. 151 

day, and his Augean stable work, so serious is 
the life he lives. 

Jan. 10, 1856. The weather has considera- 
bly moderated, — 2° at breakfast time. It was 
— 8° at seven last evening, but this has been the 
coldest night probably. You lie with your feet 
or legs curled up, waiting for the morning, the 
sheets shining with frost about your mouth. 
Water left by the stove is frozen thick, and 
what you sprinkle in bathing falls on the floor, 
ice. The house plants are all frozen, and soon 
droop and turn black. I look out on the roof 
of a cottage covered a foot deep with snow, 
wondering how the poor children in its garret, 
with their few rags, contrive to keep their toes 
warm. I mark the white smoke from its chimney 
whose contracted wreaths are soon dissipated in 
this stinging air, and think of the size of their 
wood pile. And again I try to realize how they 
panted for a breath of cool air those sultry 
nights last summer. Recall, realize now, if 
you can, the hum of the mosquito. 

It seems that the snow-storm of Saturday 
night was a remarkable one, reaching many 
hundred miles along the coast. . It is said that 
some thousands passed the night in the cars. — 
The kitchen windows were magnificent last 
night with their frost sheaves, surpassing any 
cut or ground glass. 



152 WINTER. 

I love to wade and flounder through the 
swamp now, these bitter cold days, when the 
snow lies deep on the ground, and I need travel 
but little way from the town to get to a Nova 
Zembla solitude, to wade through the swamps, 
all snowed up, untracked by man, into which the 
fine dry snow is still drifting till it is even with 
the tops of the water andromeda, and half way 
up the high blueberry bushes. I penetrate to 
islets inaccessible in summer, my feet slumping 
to the sphagnum far out of sight beneath, where 
the alderberry glows yet, . . . and perchance 
a single tree sparrow lisps by my side ; where 
there are few tracks even of wild animals. Per- 
haps only a mouse or two have burrowed up by 
the side of some twig, and hopped away in 
straight lines on the surface of the light, deep 
snow, as if too timid to delay, to another hole 
by the side of another bush, and a few rabbits 
have run in a path amid the blueberries and 
alders about the edge of the swamp. This is 
instead of a Polar Expedition, and going after 
Franklin. There is but little life and the ob- 
jects are few, it is true. We are reduced to 
admire buds, even like the partridges, and bark, 
like the rabbits and mice, the great red and 
forward looking buds of the azalea, the plump 
red ones of the blueberry, and the fine, sharp red 
ones of the panicled andromeda sleeping along 



WINTER. 153 

its stem, the speckled black alder, the rapid 
growing dogwood, the pale brown and cracked 
blueberry, etc. Even a little shining bud which 
lies sleeping behind its twig, perhaps half con- 
cealed by ice, is object enough. I feel myself 
upborne on the andromeda bushes beneath the 
snow as on a springy basket-work. Then down 
I go, up to my middle in the deep but silent 
snow, which has no sympathy with my mishap. 
Beneath its level, how many sweet berries will be 
hanging next August ! — This freezing weather 
I see the pumps dressed in mats and old clothes, 
or bundled up in straw. Fortunate he who has 
placed his cottage on the south side of some 
high hill or some dense wood, and not in the 
middle of the Great Fields where there is no hill 
nor tree to shelter it. There the winds have 
full sweep, and such a day as yesterday, the 
house is but a fence to stay the drifting snow. 
Such is the piercing wind, no man loiters be- 
tween his house and barn. The road track is 
soon obliterated, and the path which leads round 
to the back of the house, dug this morning, is 
filled up again, and you can no longer see the 
tracks of the master of the house who only an 
hour ago took refuge in some half-subterranean 
apartment there. You know only by some white 
wreath of smoke from his chimney, which is at 
once snapped up by the hungry air, that he sits 



154 WINTER. 

warming his wits there within, studying the 
almanac to learn how long it is before spring. 
But his neighbor, who, only half a mile off, has 
placed his house in the shelter of a wood, is dig- 
ging out of a drift his pile of roots and stumps, 
hauled from the swamp, at which he regularly 
dulls his axe and saw, reducing them to billets 
that will fit into his stove. With comparative 
safety and even comfort he labors at this mine. 
As for the other, the windows give no sign of 
inhabitants, for they are frosted over as if they 
were ground glass, and the curtains are down 
beside. . . . No sound arrives from within. It 
remains only to examine the chimney's nostrils. 
I look very sharp, and fancy that I see some 
smoke against the sky there, but this is decep- 
tive, for as we are accustomed to walk up to an 
empty fire-place and imagine that we feel some 
heat from it, so I have convinced myself that I 
saw smoke issuing from the chimney of a house 
which had not been inhabited for twenty years. 
I had so vivid an idea of smoke that no painter 
could have matched my imagination. It was as 
if the spirits of the former inhabitants revisiting 
their old haunts were once more boiling a spirit- 
ual kettle below. 

Jan. 10, 1858. The N. side of Walden is a 
warm walk in sunny weather. If you are sick 
and despairing, go forth in winter and see the 



WINTER. 155 

red alder catkins dangling at the extremity of 
the twigs all in the wintry air, like long, hard 
mulberries, promising a new spring and the ful- 
fillment of all our hopes. We prize any ten- 
derness, any softening in the winter, catkins, 
birds' nests, insect life, etc. The most I get, 
perchance, is the sight of a mulberry-like red 
catkin, which I know has a dormant life in it 
seemingly greater than my own. 

Jan. 10, 1859. . . . The alder is one of the 
pret'tiest trees and shrubs in the winter. It is 
evidently so full of life with its conspicuously 
pretty red catkins dangling from it on all sides. 
It seems to dread the winter less than other 
plants. It has a certain heyday and cheery 
look, less stiff than most, with more of the flex- 
ible grace of summer. With those dangling 
clusters of red catkins which it switches in the 
face of winter, it brags for all vegetation. It is 
not daunted by the cold, but still hangs grace- 
fully over the frozen stream. 

Jan. 10, 1859. ... I come across to the road 
S. of the hill, to see the pink on the snow- 
clad hill at sunset. ... I walk back and forth 
in the road waiting for its appearance. The 
windows on the skirts of the village reflect the 
setting sun with intense brilliancy, a dazzling 
glitter, it is so cold. Standing thus on one side 
of the hill, I begin to see a pink light reflected 



156 WINTER. 

from the snow there about fifteen minutes be- 
fore the sun sets. This gradually deepens to 
purple and violet in some places, and the pink is 
very distinct, especially when, after looking at 
the simply white snow on other sides, you turn 
your eyes to the hill. Even after all direct sun- 
light is withdrawn from the hill-top, as well as 
from the valley in which you stand, you see, if 
you are prepared to discern it, a faint and deli- 
cate tinge of purple and violet there. This was 
on a very clear and cold evening when the ther- 
mometer was — 6°. 

This is one of the phenomena of the winter 
sunset, this distinct pink light reflected from the 
brows of snow-clad hills on one side of you, as 
you are facing the sun. 

The cold rapidly increases, and it is — 14° in 
the evening. I hear the ground crack with a 
very loud sound, and a great jar in the evening 
and in the course of the night several times. It 
is once as loud and heavy as the explosion of the 
Acton powder mills. 

Jan. 11, 1839. 

THE THAW. 
I saw the civil sun drying earth's tears, 
Her tears of joy that only faster flowed. 

Fain would I stretch me hy the highway side 
To thaw and trickle with the melting snow, 
That mingled, soul and body, with the tide, 
I too may through the pores of nature flow. 



WINTER. 157 

Jan. 11, 1852. . . . The glory of these after- 
noons, though the sky may be mostly overcast, 
is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale green- 
ish-yellow patches of sky in the west just before 
sunset. The whole cope of heaven seen at once 
is never so elysian ; windows to heaven, the 
heavenward windows of the earth. The end of 
the day is truly Hesperian. . . . 

We sometimes find ourselves living fast, un- 
profitably, and coarsely even, as we catch our- 
selves eating our meals in unaccountable haste. 
But in one sense we cannot live too leisurely. 
^ Let me not live as if time was short. Catch the 
pace of the seasons, have leisure to attend to 
every phenomenon of nature, and to entertain 
every thought that comes to you. Let your life 
be a leisurely progress through the realms of 
nature, even in guest-quarters. . . . 

The question is not where did the traveler go ? 
What places did he see ? It would be difficult 
to choose between places. But who was the 
traveler? How did he travel? How genuine 
an experience did he get ? For traveling is, in 
the main, like as if you stayed at home, and then 
the question is, How do you live and conduct 
yourself at home ? What I mean is that it 
might be hard to decide whether I would travel 
to Lake Superior or Labrador or Florida. Per- 
haps none would be worth the while if I went 



158 WINTER. 

by the usual mode. But if I travel in a simple, 
primitive, original manner, standing in a truer 
relation to men and nature, travel away from 
the old and commonplace, get some honest ex- 
perience of life, if only out of my feet and home- 
sickness, then it becomes less important whither 
I go or how far. I so see the world from a new 
and more commanding point of view. Perhaps 
it is easier to live a true and natural life while 
traveling, as one can move about less awkwardly 
than he can stand still. 

Jan. 11, 1857. . . . For some years past I 
have partially offered myself as a lecturer, have 
been advertised as such several years. Yet I 
had but two or three invitations to lecture in 
a year, and some years none at all. I congratu- 
late myself on having been permitted to stay at 
home thus. I am so much richer for it. I do 
not see what I should have got of much value, 
except money, by going about. But I do see 
what I should have lost. It seems to me that I 
have a longer and more liberal lease of life thus. 
I cannot afford to be telling my experience, es- 
pecially to those who perhaps will take no inter- 
est in it. I wish to be getting experience. You 
might as well recommend to a bear to leave his 
hollow tree and run about all winter scratch- 
ing at all the hollow trees in the woods. He 
would be leaner in the spring than if he had 



WINTER. 159 

stayed at home and sucked his claws. As for 
the lecture-goers, it is none of their business 
what I think. I perceive that most make a great 
account of their relations, more or less personal 
or direct, to many men, coming before them as 
lecturers, writers, or public men. But all this is 
impertinent and unprofitable to me. I never get 
recognized, nor was recognized by a crowd of 
men. I was never assured of their existence, 
nor they of mine. 

There was wit and even poetry in the negro's 
answer to the man who tried to persuade him 
that the slaves would not be obliged to work in 
heaven, — " Oh, you g' way, Massa, I know 
better. If dere 's no work for cullered folks up 
dar, dey '11 make some fur 'em, and if dere 's 
nuffin better to do, dey '11 make 'em shub de 
clouds along. You can't fool dis chile, Massa." 

I was describing, the other day, my success in 
solitary and distant woodland walking outside 
the town. I do not go there to get my dinner, 
but to get that sustenance which dinners only 
preserve me to enjoy, without which dinners are 
a vain repetition. But how little men can help 
me in this, only by having a kindred experience. 
Of what use to tell them of my happiness. 
Thus, if ever we have anything important to 
say, it might be introduced with the remark, it 
is nothing to you, in particular. It is none of -f 



160 WINTER. 

your business, I know. That is what might be 
called going into good society. I never chanced 
to meet with any man so cheering and elevating 
and encouraging, so infinitely suggestive as the 
stillness and solitude of the Well Meadow field. 
Men even think me odd and perverse because I 
do not prefer their society to this Nymph or 
Wood God rather. But I have tried them. I 
have sat down with a dozen of them together in 
a club. . . . 

They did not inspire me. One or another 
abused our ears with many words and a few 
thoughts which were not theirs. There was 
very little genuine goodness apparent. We are 
such hollow pretenders. I lost my time. But 
out there ! Who shall criticise that companion ? 
It is like the hone to the knife. I bathe in that 
element, and am cleansed of all social impurities. 
I become a witness with unprejudiced senses to 
the order of the universe. There is nothing 
petty or impertinent, none to say, " See what a 
great man I am ! " There, chiefly, and not in 
the society of wits, am I cognizant of wit. Shall 
I prefer a part, an infinitely small fraction to 
the whole. There I get my underpinnings laid 
and repaired, cemented, leveled. There is my 
country club. We dine at the sign of the 
Shrub Oak, the new Albion House. 

I demand of my companion some evidence 



WINTER. 161 

that he has traveled farther than to the sources 
of the Nile, that he has been out of town, out 
of the house, not that he can tell a good story, 
but that he can keep a good silence. Has he 
attended to a silence more significant than any 
story ? Did he ever get out of the road which 
all men and fools travel ? You call yourself a 
great traveler, perhaps, but can you get beyond 
the influence of a certain class of ideas ? 

Jan. 11, 1859. At 6 a. m. —22°, and how 
much lower I know not, the mercury [?] in our 
thermometer having gone into the bulb, but 
that is said to be the lowest. Going to Boston 
to-day, I find that the cracking of the ground 
last night is the subject of conversation in the 
cars, and that it was quite general. I see many 
cracks in Cambridge and Concord. It would 
appear, then, that the ground cracks on the ad- 
vent of very severe cold weather. I had not 
heard it before this winter. It was so when I 
went to Amherst a winter or two ago. 

Jan. 11, 1861. H M brings me the 

contents of a crow's stomach in alcohol. It was 
killed in the village within a day or two. It is 
quite a mass of frozen-thawed apple pulp and 
skin, with a good many pieces of skunk-cabbage 
berries, a quarter of an inch or less in diameter, 
and commonly showing the pale brown or black- 
ish outside, interspersed, looking like bits of 



162 WINTER. 

acorns, never a whole or even half a berry, and 
two little bones as of frogs, or mice, or tadpoles. 
Also a street pebble, a quarter of an inch in 
diameter, hard to be distinguished in appearance 
from the cabbage seeds. 

Jan. 12, 1852. ... I sometimes think that I 
may go forth and walk hard and earnestly, and 
live a more substantial life, get a glorious ex- 
perience, be much abroad in heat and cold, day 
and night, live more, expend more atmospheres, 
be weary often, etc., etc. But then swiftly the 
thought comes to me, Go not so far out of your 
way for a truer life, keep strictly onward in that 
path alone which your genius points out, do the 
things which lie nearest to you, but which are 
difficult to do, live a purer, a more thoughtful 
and laborious life, more true to your friends and 
neighbors, more noble and magnanimous, and 
that will be better than a wild walk. To live in 
relations of truth and sincerity with men is to 
dwell in a frontier country. What a wild and 
unfrequented wilderness that would be ! What 
Saguenays of magnanimity that might be ex- 
plored ! — Then talk about traveling this way 
and that, as if seeing were all in the eyes, and 
a man could sufficiently report what he stood 
bodily before, when the seeing depends ever on 
the being. All report of travel is the report of 
victory or defeat, of a contest with every event 



WINTER. 163 

and phenomenon, and how you come out of it. 
A blind man who possesses inward truth and 
consistency will see more than one who has 
faultless eyes, but no serious and laborious, or 
strenuous soul to look through them. As if the 
eyes were the only part of the man that traveled. 
Men convert their property into cash, ministers 
fall sick to obtain the assistance of their par- 
ishes, all chaffer with sea-captains, etc., as if 
the whole object were to get conveyed to some 
part of the world, a pair of eyes merely. A 
telescope conveyed to and set up at the Cape 
of Good Hope at great expense, and only a 
Bushman to look through it. Nothing like a 
little activity, called life, if it were only walking 
much in a day, to keep the eye in good order, 
no such colly rium. 

Jan. 12, 1855. p. m. To Flint's Pond via 
Minott's meadow. After a spitting of snow in 
the forenoon, I see the blue sky here and there. 
The sun is coming out. It is still and warm. 
The earth is two thirds bare. I walk along the 
Mill Brook below Emerson's, looking into it 
for some life. Perhaps what most moves us in 
winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer. 
. . . What beauty in the running brooks ! what 
life ! what society ! The cold is merely super- 
ficial. It is summer still at the core. Far, 
far within, it is in the cawing of the crow, the 



164 WINTER. 

crowing of the cock, the warmth of the sun on 
our backs. I hear faintly the cawing of a 
crow far, far away, echoing from some unseen 
woodside, as if deadened by the spring-like 
vapor which the sun is drawing from the 
ground. It mingles with the slight murmur of 
the village, the sound of children at play, as 
one stream empties gently into another, and the 
wild and tame are one. What a delicious 
sound ! It is not merely crow calling to crow, 
for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great 
creature with him. If he has voice, I have ears. 
I can hear when he calls, and have engaged not 
to shoot or stone him, if he will caw to me 
each spring. On the one hand, it may be, is 
the sound of children at school saying their a, 
b, abs ; on the other, far in the wood-fringed 
horizon, the cawing of crows from their blessed 
eternal vacation, out at their long recess, chil- 
dren who have got dismissed, while the vapor, as 
incense, goes up from all the fields of the spring 
(if it were spring). Bless the Lord, O my 
soul, bless Him for wildness, for crows that will 
not alight within gunshot, and bless Him for 
hens, too, that croak and cackle in the yard. 

Jan. 12, 1859. Mr. Farmer brings me a 
hawk which he thinks has caught thirty or forty 
of his chickens since summer, for he has lost so 
many, and he has seen a hawk like this catch 



WINTER. 165 

some of them. Thinks he has seen this same 
one sitting a long time upright on a tree, high 
or low, about his premises, and when at length a 
hen or this year's chicken had strayed far from 
the rest, he skimmed along and picked it up 
without pausing, and bore it off, the chicken not 
having seen him approaching. He found the 
hawk caught by one leg and frozen to death in a 
trap which he had set for mink by a spring and 
baited with fish. — This one measures nineteen 
by forty-two inches, and is, according to Wilson 
and Nuttall, a young Falco lineatus, or red- 
shouldered hawk. It might as well be called the 
red or rusty-breasted hawk. According to the 
"Birds of Long Island," mine is the old bird.(?) 
Nuttall says it lives on frogs, crayfish, etc., and 
does not go far north, not even to Massachusetts, 
he thought. Its note, Kee-oo. He never saw 
one soar, at least in winter. ... 

Farmer says that he saw what he calls the 
common hen hawk, soaring high, with appar- 
ently a chicken in its claws, while a young hawk 
circled beneath, when the former suddenly let 
drop the chicken. But the young one failing to 
catch it, he shot down like lightning, and caught 
and bore off the falling chicken before it reached 
the earth. 

Jan. 12, 1860. ... I go forth to walk on 
the Hill at 3 p. m. Thermometer about +30°. 



166 WINTER. 

It is a very beautiful and spotless snow now, it 
having just ceased falling. You are struck by 
its peculiar tracklessness, as if it were a thick, 
white blanket just spread. As it were, each 
snow-flake lies as it first fell, or there is a regu- 
lar gradation from the denser bottom up to the 
surface which is perfectly light, and as it were 
fringed with the last flakes that fell. This was 
a star snow, dry, but the stars of considerable 
size. It lies up light as down. When I look 
closely, it seems to be chiefly composed of crys- 
tals in which the six rays or leaflets are more or 
less perfect, with a cottony powder intermixed. 
It is not yet in the least melted by the sun. 
The sun is out very bright and pretty warm, 
and going from it, I see a myriad sparkling 
points scattered over the surface of the snow, 
little mirror-like facets, which on examination I 
find to be, each, one of those star wheels, more 
or less entire, from one eighth to one third of an 
inch in diameter, which has fallen in the proper 
position, reflecting an intensely bright little sun, 
as if it were a thin and uninterrupted scale of 
mica. Such is the glitter or sparkle on the sur- 
face of such a snow freshly fallen when the sun 
comes out, and you walk from it, the points of 
light constantly changing. I suspect that these 
are good evidence of the freshness of the snow. 
The sun and wind have not yet destroyed these 
delicate reflectors. . . . 



WINTER. 167 

As I stand by the hemlocks, I am greeted by 
the lively and unusually prolonged tche -de -de 
de-de-de of a little flock of chickadees. The 
snow has ceased falling, the sun comes out, and 
it is warm and still, and this flock of chickadees, 
feeling the influences of this genial season, have 
begun to flit amid the snow-covered fans of the 
hemlocks, jarring down the snow, for there are 
hardly bare twigs enough for them to rest on, or 
they plume themselves in some sunny recess on 
the sunny side of the tree, only pausing to utter 
their tche-de-de-de. ^^^ 

, Jan. 13, 1841. We should offer up our per- 
fect (Ye'Aeia) thoughts to the gods daily. Our 
writing should be hymns and psalms. Who 
keeps a journal is purveyor to the gods. There 
are two sides to every sentence. The one is 
contiguous to me, but the other faces the gods, 
and no man ever fronted it. When I utter a 
thought, I launch a vessel which never sails in 
my harbor more, but goes sheer off into the 
deep. Consequently it demands a godlike in- 
sight, a fronting view, to read what was greatly 
written. 

Jan, 13, 1852. told me this afternoon 

of a white pine in Carlisle which the owner was 
offered thirty dollars for and refused. He had 
bought the lot for the sake of the tree which he 
left standing. 



168 WINTER. 

Here I am on the Cliffs at half-past three or 
four o'clock. The snow more than a foot deep 
over all the land. Few, if any, leave the beaten 
paths. A few clouds are floating overhead, 
downy and dark. Clear sky and bright sun, yet 
no redness. Remarkable, yet admirable, moder- 
ation that this should be confined to the morning 
and evening. Greeks were they who did it. A 
mother-o'-pearl tint at the utmost they will give 
you at mid-day, and this but rarely. Singular 
enough ! twenty minutes later, looking up, I saw 
a long, light-textured cloud, stretching from N. 
to S. with a dunnish mass and an enlightened 
border, with its under edge toward the west all 
beautiful mother-o'-pearl, as remarkable as a 
rainbow, stretching over half the heavens, and 
underneath it in the W. were flitting mother- 
o'-pearl clouds which change their loose-tex- 
tured form, and melt rapidly away, never any so 
fast, even while I write. Before I can complete 
this sentence, I look up and they are gone, like 
smoke or rather the steam from the engine in 
the winter air. Even a considerable cloud, like 
a fabulous Atlantis or unfortunate Isle in the 
Hesperian sea, is dissolved and dispersed in a 
minute or two, and nothing is left but the pure 
ether. Then another comes by magic, is born 
out of the pure blue, empyrean with beautiful 
mother-o'-pearl tints, where not a shred of vapor 



WINTER. 169 

was to be seen before, not enough to stain a 
glass, or polished steel blade. It grows more 
light and porous, the blue deeps are seen 
through it here and there, only a few flocks are 
left, and now these, too, have disappeared, and 
no one knows whither it is gone. You are com- 
pelled to look at the sky, for the earth is in- 
visible. . . .» 

Why can't I go to his office and talk with 
, and learn his facts ? But I should im- 
pose a certain restraint on him. We are strictly 
confined to our men, to whom we give liberty. . . . 

We forget to strive and aspire, to do better 
even than is expected of us. I cannot stay to 
be congratulated. I would leave the world 
behind me. We must withdraw from our flat- 
terers, even from our friends. They drag us 
down. It is rare that we use our thinking 
faculty as resolutely as an Irishman his spade. 
To please our friends and relatives we turn out 
our silver ore in cart-loads, while we neglect to 
work our mines of gold known only to ourselves, 
far up in the Sierras, where we pulled up a bush 
in our mountain walk, and saw the glittering 
treasure. Let us return thither. Let it be the 
price of our freedom to make that known. 

Jan. 13, 1854. . . . In the deep hollow this side 
of Brittan's Camp, I heard a singular buzzing 
sound from the ground exactly like that of a large 



170 WINTER. 

fly or bee in a spider's web. I kneeled down 
and with pains traced it to a small bare spot as 
big as my band amid the snow, and searched 
there amid the grass and stubble for several 
minutes, putting the grass aside with my fingers, 
till, when I got nearest to the spot, not know- 
ing but I might be stung, I used a stick. The 
sound was incessant, like that of a large fly in 
agony. But though it made my ears ache, and 
I had my stick directly on the spot, I could find 
neither prey nor oppression. At length I found 
that I interrupted or changed the tone with my 
stick, and so traced it to a few spires of dead 
grass, occupying about one quarter of an inch in 
diameter, and standing in the melted snow water. 
When I bent these one side, it produced a duller 
and baser tone. It was a sound issuing from 
the earth, and as I stooped over it, the thought 
came over me that it might be the first puling, 
infantine cry of an earthquake, which would ere- 
long ingulf me. Perhaps it was air confined 
under the frozen ground, now expanded by the 
thaw, and escaping upward through the water 
by a hollow grass stem. I left it after ten min- 
utes buzzing as loudly as at first. Could hear it 
more than a rod away. 

Schoolcraft says [of Khode Island] , " The 
present name is derived from the Dutch, who 
called it Roode Eylant (Eed Island) from the 



WINTER. 171 

autumnal color of its foliage." (Coll. R. I. Hist. 
Soc. vol. iii.) 

Jan. 13, 1856. . . . Took to pieces a pensile 
nest which I found . . . probably a vireo's, 
may be a red-eye's. In our workshops we 
pride ourselves on discovering a use for what 
had been previously regarded as waste, but how 
partial and accidental our economy compared 
with nature's. In nature nothing is wasted. 
Every decayed leaf and twig and fibre is only 
the better fitted to serve in some other depart- 
ment, and all at last are gathered in her com- 
post heap. What a wonderful genius it is that 
leads the vireo to select the tough fibre of the 
inner bark, instead of the more brittle grasses, 
for its basket, the elastic pine needles and the 
twigs curved as they dried to give it form, and, 
as I suppose, the silk of cocoons, etc., to bind it 
together with. I suspect that extensive use is 
made of these abandoned cocoons by the birds, 
and they, if anybody, know where to find them. 
There were at least seven materials used in con- 
structing this nest, and the bird visited as many 
distinct localities many times, always with the 
purpose or design of finding some particular one 
of these materials, as much as if it had said to 
itself, " Now I will go and get some old hor- 
net's nest from one of those that I saw last fall, 
down in the maple swamp, perhaps thrust my 



172 WINTER. 

bill into them, or some silk from those cocoons I 
saw this morning." 

Jan. 13, 1857. I hear one thrumming a guitar 
below stairs. It reminds me of moments that I 
have lived. What a comment on our life is the 
least strain of music ! It lifts me above all the 
dust and mire of the universe. I soar or hover 
with clean skirts over the field of my life. It 
is ever life within life in concentric spheres. 
The field wherein I toil or rust at any time is at 
the same time the field for such different kinds 
of life ! The farmer's boy or hired man has an 
instinct which tells him as much indistinctly; 
hence his dreams and his restlessness, hence 
even it is that he wants money to realize his 
dream with. The identical field where I am 
leading my humdrum life, let but a strain of 
music be heard there, is seen to be the field of 
some unrecorded crusade or tournament, the 
thought of which excites in us an ecstasy of joy. 
The way in which I am affected by this faint 
thrumming advertises me that there is still 
some health and immortality in the springs of 
me. What an elixir is this sound ! I who but 
lately came and went and lived under — a dish 
cover — live now under the heavens. It releases 
me, bursts my bonds. Almost all, perhaps all, 
our life is, speaking comparatively, a stereo- 
typed despair, i. e., we never at any time realize 



WINTER. 173 

the full grandeur of our destiny. We habit- 
ually, forever and ever, underrate our fate. 
Talk of infidels, why, all of the race of man, 
except in the rarest moments when they are 
lifted above themselves by an ecstasy, are infi- 
dels. With the very best disposition, what does 
my belief amount to ? This poor, timid, unen- 
lightened, thick - skinned creature, what can it 
believe? I am, of course, hopelessly ignorant 
and unbelieving until some divinity stirs within 
me. Ninety-nine one hundredths of our lives 
we are mere hedgers and ditchers, but from time 
to time we meet with reminders of our destiny. 
— We hear the kindred vibrations, music ! and 
we put out our dormant feelers into the limits 
of the universe. We attain to wisdom that 
passeth understanding. The stable continents 
undulate. The hard and fixed becomes fluid. 

" Unless above himself lie can 
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man." 

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am 
invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the 
earliest times, and to the latest. 

There are infinite degrees of life, from that 
which is next to sleep and death to that which 
is forever awake and immortal. We must not 
confound man with man. We cannot conceive 
of a greater difference than that between the 
life of one man and that of another. I am con- 



174 WINTER. 

strained to believe that the mass of men are 
never so lifted above themselves that their des- 
tiny is seen to be transcendently beautiful and 
grand. 

Jan. 13, 1858. ... At Jonathan Buffum's, 
Lynn. Lecture in John B. Alley's parlor. Mr. 
J. Buffum describes to me ancient wolf traps, 
made probably by the early settlers in Lynn, 
perhaps after an Indian model; one some two 
miles from the shore near Saugus, another, 
more northerly, holes say seven feet deep, about 
as long, and some three feet wide, stoned up 
very smoothly and perhaps converging a little, 
so that the wolf could not get out. — Tradition 
says that a wolf and a squaw were one morning 
found in the same hole, staring at each other. 

Jan. 13, 1860. . . . Farmer says that he remem- 
bers his father saying that as he stood in a field 
once, he saw a hawk soaring above and eying 
something on the ground. Looking round, he 
saw a weasel there eying the hawk. Just then 
the hawk stooped, and the weasel at the same 
instant sprang upon him. Up went the hawk with 
the weasel, but by and by began to come down 
as fast as he went up, rolling over and over, till 
he struck the ground. His father going to him, 
raised him up, when out hopped the weasel 
from under his wing, and ran off, none the 
worse for his fall. 



WINTER. 175 

Jan. 14, 1852. ... I love to see now a cock 
of deep, reddish meadow hay full of ferns and 
other meadow plants of the coarsest kind. My 
imagination supplies the green and the hum of 
bees. What a memento of summer such a hay- 
cock ! To stand beside one covered with snow 
in winter through which the dry meadow plants 
peep out ! And yet our hopes survive. . . . 

As usual, there was no blueness in the ruts 
and crevices of the snow to-day. What kind of 
atmosphere does this require? When I ob- 
served it the other day, it was a rather moist 
air, some snow falling, the sky completely over- 
cast, and the weather not very cold. It is 
one of the most interesting phenomena of the 
winter. 

Jan. 14, 1854. If the writers of the brazen 
age are most suggestive to thee, confine thyself 
to them, and leave those of the Augustan age 
to dust and the bookworms. . . . 

Cato makes the vineyard of first importance 
to a farm ; second, a well-watered garden ; third, 
a willow plantation (salictuni) ; fourth, an olive 
yard (pletum) ; fifth, a meadow, or grass ground 
(jpratum) ; sixth, a grain field or tillage (campus 
frumentarius) ; seventh, a wood for fuel (?) 
(silva ccedua) ; Varro speaks of planting and 
cultivating this ; eighth, an arbustum ; Colu- 
mella says it is a plantation of elms, and for 



176 WINTER. 

vines to rest on ; ninth, a wood that yields mast 
(jglandaria silva). He says elsewhere the ar- 
bustum yields ligna et virgce. 

He says, " In early manhood, the master of a 
family must study to plant his ground. As for 
building, he must think a long time about it 
(diu cogitare). He must not think about plant- 
ing, but do it. When he gets to be thirty-six 
years old, then let him build, if he has his 
ground planted. So build that the villa may 
not have to seek the farm, nor the farm the 
villa." This contains sound advice, as pertinent 
now as ever. . . . "If you have done one thing 
late, you will do all your work late," says Cato 
to the farmer. — They raised a sallow (salicein), 
to tie vines with. Ground subject to fogs is 
called nebulosus. . . . Oxen " must have muz- 
zles (or little baskets, fiscellas) that they may 
not go in quest of grass (ne herbam sectentur), 
when they plow." 

Jan. 14, 1855. Skated to Baker Farm with 
a rapidity which astonished myself, before the 
wind, feeling the rise and fall (the water having 
settled in the suddenly cold night) which I had 
not time to see. ... A man feels like a new 
creature, a deer perhaps, moving at this rate. 
He takes new possession of nature in the name 
of his own majesty. There was I, and there, 
and there, as Mercury went down the Idaean 



WINTER. 177 

mountains. I judged that in a quarter of an 
hour I was three and one half miles from home 
without having made any particular exertion. 

Jan. 14, 1857. Up Assabet on ice. ... I 
notice on the black willows, and also on 
the alders and white maples overhanging the 
stream, numerous dirty-white cocoons, about an 
inch long, attached by their sides to the base of 
the recent twigs, and disguised by dry leaves 
curled about them, a sort of fruit which these 
trees bear now. The leaves are not attached to 
the twigs, but artfully arranged about, and 
fastened to the cocoons. Almost every little 
cluster of leaves contains a cocoon, apparently 
of one species, so that often when you would 
think the trees were retaining their leaves, it is 
not the trees, but the caterpillars that have re- 
tained them. I do not see a cluster of leaves 
on a maple, unless on a dead twig, but it con- 
ceals a cocoon. Yet I cannot find one alive. 
They are all crumbled within. The black wil- 
lows retain very few of their narrow curled 
leaves here and there, like the terminal leaflet 
of a fern. The maples and alders scarcely any 
ever. Yet these few are just enough to with- 
draw attention from those which surround the 
cocoons. What kind of understanding was 
there between the mind that determined that 
these leaves should hang on during the winter 



178 WINTER. 

and that of the worm that fastened a few of 
these leaves to its cocoon in order to disguise 
it ? I thus walk along the edge of the trees and 
bushes which overhang the stream, gathering 
the cocoons which probably were thought to be 
doubly secure here. These cocoons, of course, 
were attached before the leaves had fallen. Al- 
most every one is already empty, or contains only 
the relics of a nymph. It has been attacked and 
devoured by some foe. These numerous cocoons 
attached to the twigs overhanging the stream in 
the still and biting winter day suggest a certain 
fertility in the river borders, impart a kind of 
life to them, and so are company to me. There 
is so much more life than is suspected in the 
most solitary and dreary scene. They are as 
much as the lisping of a chickadee. 

Jan. 14, 1858. Mr. Buffum says that in 
1817-1819 he saw the sea-serpent at Swamp- 
scott, and so did several hundred others. He 
was to be seen off and on for some time. There 
were many people on the beach the first time in 
carriages partly in the water, and the serpent 
came so near that they, thinking he might come 
ashore, involuntarily turned their horses to the 
shore, as with a general consent, and this move- 
ment caused him to sheer off also. The road 
from Boston was lined with people directly, 
coming to see the monster. Prince came with 



WINTER. 179 

his spy-glass, saw, and printed his account of 
him. Buffum says he has seen him twenty 
times ; once alone from the rocks at Little 
Nahant, where he passed along close to the shore 
just beneath the surface, and within fifty or 
sixty feet of him, so that he could have touched 
him with a very long pole, if he had dared to. 
Buffum is about sixty, and it should be said, as 
affecting the value of his evidence, that he is a 
firm believer in Spiritualism. 

Jan. 14, 1860. . . . It is a mild day, and I 
notice, what I have not observed for some 
time, that blueness of the air only to be per- 
ceived in a mild day. I see it between me and 
woods half a mile distant. The softening of the 
air amounts to this. The mountains are quite 
invisible. You come forth to see this great 
blue presence lurking about the woods and the 
horizon. 

Jan. 15, 1838. After all that has been said 
in praise of the Saxon race, we must allow that 
our blue-eyed and fair-haired ancestors were 
originally an ungodly and reckless crew. 

Jan. 15, 1852. ... I do not know but the 
poet is he who generates poems. By continence 
he rises to creation on a higher level, a super- 
natural level. . . . 

For the first time this winter I notice snow 
fleas this afternoon in Walden wood. Wher- 



180 WINTER. 

ever I go, they are to be seen, especially in the 
deepest ruts and foot-tracks. Their number is 
almost infinite. It is a rather warm and moist 
afternoon, and feels like rain. I suppose that 
some peculiarity in the weather has called them 
forth from the bark of the trees. 

It is good to see Minott's hens pecking and 
scratching the ground. What never-failing 
health they suggest ! Even the sick hen is so 
naturally sick, like a green leaf turning to 
brown. No wonder men love to have hens about 
them, and hear their creaking note. They are 
even laying eggs from time to time still, the 
undespairing race ! 

Jan. 15, 1853. . . . Mrs. Eipley told me this 
p. M. that Russell had decided that that green 
(and sometimes yellow) dust on the underside 
of stones in walls was a decaying state of Lepra- 
ria chlorina, a lichen ; the yellow another spe- 
cies of Lepraria. I have long known this dust, 
but as I did not know the name of it, i. e., what 
others called it, and therefore could not conven- 
iently speak of it, it has suggested less to me, 
and I have made less use of it. I now first feel 
as if I had got hold of it. 

Jan. 15, 1857. ... As I passed the south shed 
at the depot, observed what I thought at first a 
tree sparrow on the wood in the shed, a mere 
roof open at the sides, under which several men 



WINTER. 181 

were at that time employed sawing wood with a 
horse-power. Looking closer, I saw, to my sur- 
prise, that it must be a song sparrow, it having 
the usual marks on its breast, and no bright 
chestnut crown. The snow is nine or ten inches 
deep, and it appeared to have taken refuge in 
this shed where was much bare ground exposed 
by removing the wood. When I advanced, in- 
stead of flying away, it concealed itself in the 
wood, just as it often dodges behind a wall. 

What is there in music that it should so stir 
our deeps ? We are all ordinarily in a state of 
desperation. Such is our life, it ofttimes drives 
us to suicide. To how many, perhaps to most, 
life is barely tolerable, and if it were not for the 
fear of death or of dying, what a multitude 
would immediately commit suicide. But let us 
hear a strain of music, and we are at once ad- 
vertised of a life which no man had told us of, 
which no preacher preaches. Suppose I try to 
describe faithfully the prospect which a strain 
of music exhibits to me. The field of my life 
becomes a boundless plain, glorious to tread, 
with no death nor disappointment at the end of 
it. All meanness and trivialness disappear. I 
become adequate to my deed. No particulars 
survive this expansion. Persons do not survive 
it. In the light of this strain there is no thou 
nor I. We are actually lifted above ourselves. 



182 WINTER. 

The tracks of the mice near the head of Well 
Meadow were particularly interesting. There 
was a level of pure snow there, unbroken by 
bushes or grass, about four rods across, and 
here were the tracks of mice running across it, 
from the bushes on this side to those on the 
other, the tracks quite near together, but re- 
peatedly crossing each other at very acute angles, 
though each particular course was generally 
quite direct. The snow was so light that only 
one distinct track was made by all four of the 
feet, . . . but the tail left a very distinct mark. 
A single track stretching away almost straight, 
sometimes half a dozen rods over the unspotted 
snow, is very handsome, like a chain of a new 
pattern, and suggests an airy lightness in the 
body that impressed it. Though there may 
have been but one or two here, the tracks sug- 
gest quite a little company that had gone gad- 
ding over to their neighbors under the opposite 
bush. Such is the delicacy of the impression 
on the surface of the lightest snow, where other 
creatures sink, and night, too, being the season 
when these tracks are made, they remind me of a 
fairy revel. It is almost as good as if the actors 
were here. I can easily imagine all the rest. 
Hopping is expressed by the tracks themselves. 
Yet I should like much to see, by broad day- 
light, a company of these revelers hopping 



WINTER. 183 

over the snow. There is a still life in America 
that is little observed or dreamed of. . . . Plow 
snug they are somewhere under the snow now, 
not to be thought of, if it were not for these 
pretty tracks. For a week, or fortnight even, of 
pretty still weather, the tracks will remain to tell 
of the nocturnal adventures of a tiny mouse. . . . 
So it was so many thousands of years before 
Gutenberg invented printing with Ms types, and 
so it will be so many thousands of years after 
his types are forgotten perchance. The deer- 
mouse will be printing in the snow of Well 
Meadow to be read by a new race of men. 

Jan. 16, 1838. Man is like a cork which no 
tempest can sink, but it will float securely to its 
haven at last. 

The world is never the less beautiful, though 
viewed through a chink or knot-hole. 

Jan. 16, 1852. I see that to some men their 
relation to mankind is all important. It is fatal 
in their eyes to outrage the opinions and cus- 
toms of their fellow-men. Failure and success 
are therefore never proved by them by absolute 
and universal tests. I feel myself not so vitally 
related to my fellow-men. I impinge on them 
but by a point on one side. It is not a Siamese- 
twin ligature that binds me to them. It is un- 
safe to defer so much to mankind and the opin- 
ions of society, for these are always, and without 



184 WINTER. 

exception, heathenish and barbarous, seen from 
the heights of philosophy. A wise man sees as 
clearly the heathenism and barbarity of his own 
countrymen as those of the nations to whom his 
countrymen send missionaries. The English- 
man and American are subject equally to many 
national superstitions with the Hindoos and 
Chinese. My countrymen are to me foreigners. 
I have but little more sympathy with them than 
with the mob of India or of China. All nations 
are remiss in their duties, and fall short of their 
standards. Madame Pfeiffer says of the Par- 
sees or Fire- worshipers in Bombay, who should 
all have been on hand on the esplanade to greet 
the first rays of the sun, that she found only a 
few here and there, and some did not make 
their appearance till nine o'clock. — I see no im- 
portant difference between the assumed gravity 
and bought funeral sermon of the parish clergy- 
man and the howlings and strikings of the 
breast of the hired mourning women of the 
East. 

Bill Wheeler had two clumps for feet, and 
progressed slowly by short steps, having frozen 
his feet once, as I understood. Him I have 
been sure to meet once in five years, progressing 
into the town on his stubs, holding the middle 
of the road, as if he drove the invisible herd of 
the world before him, especially on a military 



WINTER. 185 

day ; out of what confines, whose hired man 
having been, in what remote barn having quar- 
tered all these years, I never knew. He seemed 
to belong to a different caste from other men, 
and reminded me both of the Indian pariah and 
martyr. I understood that somebody was found 
to give him his drink for the few chores he 
could do. His meat was never referred to, he 
had so sublimed his life. One day since this, 
uot long ago, I saw in my walk a kind of shelter, 
such as woodmen might use, in the woods by the 
Great Meadows, made of meadow hay cast over 
a rude frame. Thrusting my head in at a hole, 
as I am wont to do in such cases, I found Bill 
Wheeler there curled up asleep on the hay, who, 
being suddenly wakened from a sound sleep, 
rubbed his eyes, and inquired if I found any 
game, thinking I was sporting. I came away 
reflecting much on that man's life, how he com- 
municated with none, how now, perchance, he 
did chores for none, how he lived perhaps from 
a deep principle, that he might be some mighty 
philosopher, greater than Socrates or Diogenes, 
simplifying life, returning to nature, having 
turned his back on towns, how many things he 
had put off, luxuries, comforts, human society, 
even his feet, wrestling with his thoughts. I 
felt even as Diogenes when he saw the boy drink- 
ing out of his hands, and threw away his cup. 



186 WINTER. 

Here was one who went alone, did no work, and 
had no relatives that I knew of, was not ambitious 
that I could see, did not depend on the good opin- 
ions of men. Must he not see things with an 
impartial eye, disinterested, as the toad observes 
the gardener. Perchance here is one of a sect 
of philosophers, the only one, so simple, so ab- 
stracted in thought and life from his contempo- 
raries, that his wisdom is indeed foolishness to 
them. Who knows but in his solitary meadow 
hay bunk he indulges in thought only in trium- 
phant satires on men. Who knows but here is 
a superiority to literature, etc., unexpressed and 
inexpressible, one who has resolved to humble 
and mortify himself as never man was humbled 
and mortified, whose very vividness of percep- 
tion, clear knowledge, and insight have made 
him dumb, leaving no common consciousness and 
ground of parlance with his kind, or rather his 
unlike kindred ! whose news plainly is not my 
news nor yours. I was not sure for a moment 
but here was a philosopher who had left far be- 
hind him the philosophers of Greece and India, 
and I envied him his advantageous point of 
view. I was not to be deceived by a few stupid 
words, of course, and apparent besottedness. It 
was his position and career that I contemplated. 

C has a great respect for McKean, he 

stands on so low a level; says he is great for 



WINTER. 187 

conversation. He never says anything, hardly 
answers a question, but keeps at work, never 
exaggerates, nor uses an exclamation, and does 
as he agrees to. He appears to have got his 
shoulder to the wheel of the universe. But the 
other day he weut greater lengths with me, as 
he and Barry were sawing down a pine, both 
kneeling of necessity. I said it was wet work 
for the knees in the snow. He observed, looking 
up at me, " We pray without ceasing." 

But to return to Bill. I would have liked to 
know what view he took of life. — A month or 
two after this, as I heard, he was found dead 
among the brush over back of the hill, so far 
decomposed that his coffin was carried to his 
body, which was put into it with pitch-forks. — 
I have my misgivings still that he may have died 
a Brahmin's death, dwelling at the roots of trees 
at last, though I have since been assured that he 
suffered from disappointed love (was what is 
called love-cracked), than which can there be any 
nobler suffering, any fairer death for a human 
creature ? That this made him drink, froze his 
feet, and did all the rest for him. Why have 
not the world the benefit of his long trial? 

Jan. 16, 1853. . . . Trench says that " Rivals, 
in the primary sense of the word, are those who 
dwell on the banks of the same stream," or " on 
opposite banks," but (as he says in the case of 



188 WINTER. 

many words) since the use of water rights is a 
fruitful source of contention between such neigh- 
bors, the word has acquired this secondary sense. 
My friends are my rivals on the Concord in the 
primitive sense of the word. There is no strife 
between us respecting the use of the stream. 
The Concord offers many privileges, but none 
to quarrel about. It is a peaceful, not a brawl- 
ing stream. . . . Bailey, I find, has it, " Rival 
[Rivalis L. . . . qui juxta eundem rivum pas- 
cit]." 

Jan. 16, 1859. p. m. To Walden, and thence 
via Cassandra ponds to Fair Haven, and down 
river. . . . As we go southwestward through the 
Cassandra hollows toward the declining sun, 
they look successively, both by their form and 
color, like burnished silver shields in the midst 
of which we walked, looking toward the sun. 
The whole surface of the snow, the country over, 
and of the ice, as yesterday, is rough, as if com- 
posed of hailstones half melted together. . . . 

The snow which three quarters conceals the 
Cassandra in these ponds, and every twig and 
trunk and blade of withered sedge, is . . . cased 
with ice, and accordingly, as I have said, when 
you go facing the sun, the hollows look like glitter- 
ing shields set round with brilliants. That bent 
sedge in the midst of the shield, each particular 
blade of it, being married to an icy wire, twenty 



WINTER. 189 

times its size at least, shines like polished silver 
rings or semicircles. It must have been far 
more splendid yesterday before any of the ice 
fell off. No wonder my English companion 
says that our scenery is more spirited than that 
of England. The snow crust is rough with the 
wrecks of brilliants under the trees, an inch or 
two thick with them under many trees where 
they last several days. 

Jan, 16, 1860. ... I see a flock of tree 
sparrows picking something from the surface of 
the snow amid some bushes. Watching one 
attentively, I find that it is feeding on the very 
fine brown chaffy- looking seed of the panicled 
andromeda. It understands how to get its din- 
ner, to make the plant give down, perfectly. 
It flies up and alights on one of the dense 
brown panicles of the hard berries, and gives it 
a vigorous shaking and beating with its claws 
and bill, sending down a shower of seed to the 
snow beneath. It lies very distinct, though fine 
almost as dust, on the spotless snow. It then 
hops down and briskly picks up from the 
snow what it wants. How very clean and agree- 
able to the imagination, and withal abundant, is 
this kind of food ! How delicately they fare ! 
These dry persistent seed vessels hold their 
crusts of bread until shaken. The snow is the 
white table-cloth on which they fall. ... It 



190 WINTER. 

shakes down a hundred times as much as it 
wants, and shakes the same or another cluster 
after each successive snow. How bountifully 
nature feeds them. No wonder they come to 
spend the winter with us, and are at ease with 
regard to their food. . . . How neatly and sim- 
ply they feed ! This shrub grows unobserved 
by most, only known to botanists, and at length 
matures its hard, dry seed vessels, which, if no- 
ticed, are hardly supposed to contain seed ; but 
there is no shrub or weed which is not known 
to some bird. Though you may have never 
noticed it, the tree sparrow comes from the 
north in the winter straight to this shrub, and 
confidently shakes its panicles, and then feasts 
on the fine shower of seeds that falls from it. 

Jan. 17, 1841. A true happiness never hap- 
pened, but rather is proof against all hope. I 
would not be a happy, that is, a lucky man, but 
rather a necessitated and doomed one. 

After so many years of study, I have not 
learned my duty for one hour. I am stranded 
at each reflux of the tide, and I, who sailed as 
buoyantly on the middle deep as a ship, am as 
helpless as a muscle on the rock. I cannot 
account to myself for the hour I live. Here 
time has given me a dull prosaic evening, not of 
kin to vesper or Cynthia, a dead lapse, where 
Time's stream seems settling into a pool, a still- 



WINTER. 191 

ness not as if Nature's breath were held, but 
expired. Let me know that such hours as this 
are the wealthiest in Time's gift. It is the in- 
sufficiency of the hour which, if we but feel and 
understand, we shall reassert our independence 
then. 

Jan. 17, 1852. . . . The other day as I was 

passing the house . . . with my pantaloons 

as usual tucked into my boots (there was no 

path beyond H 's), I heard some persons 

in 's shed, but did not look round, and when 

I had got a rod or two beyond, I heard some one 
call out impudently from the shed, something 
like, " Holloa, Mister, what do you think of the 
walking ? " I turned round directly, and saw 
three men standing in the shed. I was resolved 
to discomfit them, that they should prove their 
manhood, if they had any, and find something 
to say, though they had nothing before, that 
they should make amends to the universe by 
feeling cheap. They should either say to my 
face and eye what they had said to my back, or 
they should feel the meanness of having to 
change their tone. So I called out, looking at 
one, " Do you wish to speak to me, sir ? " No 
answer. So I stepped a little nearer and re- 
peated the question, when one replied, " Yes, 
sir." So I advanced with alacrity up the path 
they had shoveled. In the mean while one ran 



192 WINTER. 

into the house. I thought I had seen the near- 
est one. He called me by name faintly and 
with hesitation, and held out his hand half un- 
consciously, which I did not decline. I inquired 
gravely if he wished to say anything to me. He 
could only wave to the other, and mutter, " My 
brother." I approached him and repeated the 
question. He looked as if he were shrinking 
into a nutshell, a pitiable object he was, and 
looked away from me while he began to frame 
some business, some surveying that he might 
wish to have done. I saw that he was drunk, 
that his brother was ashamed of him, and I 
turned my back on him in the outset of this 
indirect and drunken apology. . . . 

In proportion as I have celestial thoughts is 
the necessity for me to be out and behold the 
western sky before sunset these winter days. 
That is the symbol of the unclouded mind that 
knows neither winter nor summer. What is 
your thought like ? That is the hue, that the 
purity and transparency and distance from 
earthly taint of my inmost mind ; for whatever 
we see without is a symbol of something within, 
and that which is farthest off is the symbol of 
what is deepest within. The lover of contem- 
plation, accordingly, will gaze much into the sky. 
Fair thoughts and a serene mind make fair 
days. 



WINTER. 193 

Here, also, is the symbol of the triumph which 
succeeds to a grief that has tried us to our ad- 
vantage, so that at last we can smile through our 
tears. It is the aspect with which we come out 
of the house of mourning. We have found our 
relief in tears. — As the skies appear to a man, 
so is his mind. Some see only clouds there, some 
prodigies and portents ; some scarce look up at 
all, their heads, like those of the brutes, are 
directed towards earth. Some behold there 
serenity, purity, beauty ineffable. — The world 
run to see the panorama, while there is a pano- 
rama in the sky which few go out to see. 

. . . There might be a chapter, when I speak 
of hens in the thawy days and spring weather 
on the chips, called Chickweed or Plantain. 

Those western . . . vistas through clouds to 
the sky show the clearest heavens, clearer and 
more elysian than when the whole sky is compar- 
atively free from clouds, for then there is wont 
to be a vapor more generally diffused, especially 
near the horizon, which in cloudy days is ab- 
sorbed, as it were, or collected into masses, and 
the vistas are clearer than the unobstructed 
cope of heaven. 

What endless variety in the form and texture 
of the clouds, some fine, some coarse-grained! 
I saw to-night what looked like the back bone 
with portions of the ribs of a fossil monster. 



194 WINTER. 

Every form and creature is thus shadowed forth 
in vapor in the heavens. . . . 

It appears to me that at a very early age the 
mind of man, perhaps at the same time with his 
body, ceases to be elastic. His intellectual 
power becomes something denned and limited. 
He does not think expansively, as he was wont 
to stretch himself in his growing days. What 
was flexible sap hardens into heart wood, and 
there is no further change. In the season of 
youth man seems to me capable of intellectual 
effort and performance which surpass all rules 
and bounds as the youth lays out his whole 
strength without fear or prudence, and does not 
feel his limits. It is the transition from poetry 
to prose. The young man can run and leap, 
he has not learned exactly how far. . . . The 
grown man does not exceed his daily labor. He 
has no strength to waste. 

Jan. 17, 1853. . . . Cato, prescribing a med- 
icamentum for oxen, says, " When you see a 
snake's slough, take it and lay it up, that you 
may not have to seek it when it is wanted." 
This was mixed with bread, corn, etc. 

He tells how to make bread and different 
kinds of cakes, viz., a libum, a placenta, a spira 
(so called because twisted like a rope, perhaps 
like doughnuts), scriblita (because ornamented 
with characters like writing), globi (globes), 



WINTER. 195 

etc. ; tells how to make vows for your oxen with 
an offering to Mars, and Sylvanus in a wood, 
no woman to be present, or to know how it is 
done. 

... If you wish to remove an ill savor from 
wine, he recommends to heat a brick, pitch it, 
and let it down by a string to the bottom of the 
cask, and let it remain there two days, the cask 
being stopped. " If you wish to know if water 
has been added to wine, make a little vessel of 
ivy wood (materia ederaced). Put into it the wine 
which you think has water in it. If it has water, 
the wine will run out (effluet); the water will 
remain, for a vessel of ivy wood does not hold 
wine." 

" Make a sacrificial feast for the oxen when 
the pear is in blossom. Afterward begin to 
plow in the spring." — " That day is to be holy 
(feriai) to the oxen, and herdsmen, and those 
who make the feast." They offer wine and mut- 
ton to Jupiter Dap alls, also to Vesta if they 
choose. . . . 

When they thinned a consecrated grove (lu- 
cum conlncare, as if to let in the light to a 
shady place) they were to offer a hog by way of 
expiation, and pray the god or goddess to whom 
it was sacred to be propitious to them, their 
house, and family, and children. Should not 
every grove be regarded as a lucus or conse- 



196 WINTER. 

crated grove in this sense. I wish that our farm- 
ers felt some such awe when they cut down our 
consecrated groves. 

He gives several charms to cure diseases, 
mere magician's words. 

Jan. 17, 1860. . . . Alcott said well the 
other day that this was his definition of heaven, 
"A place where you can have a little conver- 
sation.'' 

Jan. 18, 1841. We must expect no income 
beside our outgoes. We must succeed now, and 
we shall not fail hereafter. So soon as we be- 
gin to count the cost, the cost begins. 

If our scheme is well built within, any mis- 
hap to the outbuilding will not be fatal. 

The capital wanted is an entire independence 
of all capital but a clear conscience and a reso- 
lute will. 

When we are so poor that the howling of the 
wind shall have a music in it, and not declare 
war against our property, the proprietors may 
well envy us. — We have been seeking riches 
not by a true industry or building within, but 
by mere accumulation, putting together what 
was without till it rose a heap beside us. We 
should rather acquire them by the utter renun- 
ciation of them. If I hold a house and land 
as property, am I not disinherited of sun, wind, 
rain, and all good beside? The richest are 



WINTER. 197 

only some degrees poorer than nature. It is 
impossible to have more property than we dis- 
f pense. Genius is only as rich as it is generous. 
If it hoards, it impoverishes itself. What the 
banker sighs for, the meanest clown may have, 
leisure and a quiet mind. 

Jan. 18, 1852. ... I still remember those 
wonderful sparkles at Pelham Pond. The very 
sportsmen in the distance with their dogs and 
guns presented some surfaces on which a sparkle 
could impinge, such was the transparent, flash- 
ing air. It was a most exhilarating, intoxicating 
air, as when poets sing of the sparkling wine. . . . 
7 What is like the peep or whistle of a bird in 
the midst of a winter storm ? 

The pines, some of them, seen through this 
fine driving snow, have a bluish hue. 

Jan. 18, 1856. . . . p. m. To Walden, to 
learn the temperature of the water. . . . This is 
a very mild, melting winter day, but clear and 
bright. Yet I see the blue shadows on the snow 
at Walden. The snow lies very level there, 
about ten inches deep, and, for the most part, 
bears me as I go across with my hatchet. I think 
I never saw a more elysian blue than my shadow. 
I am turned into a tall blue Persian from my 
cap to my boots, such as no mortal dye can pro- 
duce, with an amethystine hatchet in my hand. 
I am in raptures with my own shadow. Our 



198 WINTER. 

very shadows are no longer black, but a celestial 
blue. This has nothing to do with cold I think, 
but the sun must not be too low. 

I cleared a little space in the snow, which was 
nine or ten inches deep, over the deepest part of 
the pond, and cut through the ice, which was 
about seven inches thick. . . . The moment I 
reached the water, it gushed up and overflowed 
the ice, driving me out of this yard in the snow, 
where it stood at least two and one half inches 
deep above the ice. The thermometer indicated 
33^° at top, and 34f° when drawn up rapidly 
from thirty feet beneath ; so, apparently, it is 
not much warmer beneath. 

Jan. 18, 1859. That wonderful frostwork 
of the 13th and 14th was too rare to be neg- 
lected, succeeded as it was also by two days 
of glaze, but having company, I lost half the 
advantage of it. . . . 

We did not have an opportunity to see how it 
would look in the sun, but seen against the mist 
or fog, it was too fair to be remembered. The 
trees were the ghosts of trees appearing in their 
winding sheets, an intenser white against the 
comparatively dusky ground of the fog. I rode 
to Acton in the afternoon of the 13th, and I 
remember the wonderful avenue of these faery 
trees which everywhere overarched my road. 
The elms, from their form and size, were partic- 



WINTER. 199 

ularly beautiful. As far as I observed, the 
frostwork was deepest in the low grounds, 
especially on the Salix alba there. I learn 
from the papers that this phenomenon prevailed 
all over this part of the country, and attracted 
the admiration of all. The trees on Boston Com- 
mon were clad in the same snow-white livery 
with our Musketaquid trees. . . . 

Every one, no doubt, has looked with delight, 
holding his face low, at that beautiful frostwork 
which so frequently in winter mornings is seen 
bristling about the throat of every breathing 
hole in the earth's surface. In this case, the 
fog, the earth's breath made visible, was in such 
abundance that it invested all our vales and 
hills, and the frostwork, instead of being con- 
fined to the chinks and crannies of the earth, 
covered the mightiest trees, so that we, walking 
beneath them, had the same wonderful prospect 
and environment that an insect would have . . . 
making its way through a chink in the earth 
which was bristling with hoar frost. That glaze ! 
I know what it was by my own experience ; it 
was the frozen breath of the earth upon its 
beard. . . . 

Take the most rigid tree, the whole effect is 
peculiarly soft and spirit-like, for there is no 
marked edge or outline. How could you draw 
the outline of these snowy fingers seen against 
the fog, without exaggeration. . . . 



200 WINTER. 

Hardly could the New England farmer drive 
to market under these trees without feeling 
that his sense of beauty was addressed. ... A 
farmer told me in all sincerity that, having occa- 
sion to go into Walden woods in his sleigh, he 
thought he never saw anything so beautiful in all 
his life, and if there had been men there who 
knew how to write about it, it would have been 
a great occasion for them. Many times I 
thought that if the particular tree, commonly an 
elm, under which I was walking or riding were 
the only one like it in the country, it would be 
worth a journey across the continent to see it. 
Indeed, I have no doubt that such journeys 
would be undertaken on hearing a true account 
of it. But instead of being confined to a single 
tree, this wonder was as cheap and common as 
the air itself. Every man's wood-lot was a mir- 
acle and surprise to him, and for those who 
could not go far there were the trees in the 
street and the weeds in the yard. . . . The 
weeping willow with its thickened twigs seemed 
more precise and regularly curved than ever, 
and was as still as if carved from alabaster. . . . 

It was remarkable that when the fog was a 
little thinner, so that you could see the pine 
woods a mile or more off, they were a distinct 
dark blue. — If any tree is set and stiff, it was 
now more stiff ; if any airy and graceful, it was 



WINTER. 201 

now more graceful. The birches, especially, were 
a great ornament. 

Jan. 18, 1860. ... As I stood under Lee's 
Cliff, several chickadees, uttering their faint 
notes, came flitting near to me as usual. They are 
busily prying under the bark of the pitch pines, 
occasionally knocking off a piece, while they 
cling with their claws on any side of the limb. 
Of course they are in search of animal food, but 
I see one suddenly dart down to a seedless pine- 
seed wing on the snow, and then up again. 

C says that he saw them busy about these 

wings on the snow the other day, so I have no 
doubt that they eat this seed. 

The sky in the reflection at the open reach at 
Hubbard's Bath is more green than in reality, 
and also darker blue. The clouds are blacker, 
and the purple more distinct. 

Jan. 19, 1841. . . . Coleridge, speaking of 
the love of God, says, " He that loves, may be 
sure he was loved first." The love wherewith 
we are loved is already declared, and afloat in 
the atmosphere, and our love is only the inlet 
to it. It is an inexhaustible harvest, always 
ripe and ready for the sickle. It grows on 
every bush, and let not those complain of their 
fates who will not pluck it. We need make no 
beggarly demand for it, but pay the price, and 
depart. No transaction can be simpler. Love's 



^ 



202 WINTER. 

accounts are kept by single entry. When we 
are amiable, then is love in the gale, and in sun 
and shade, and day and night; and to sigh under 
the cold, cold moon for a love unrequited is to 
put a slight upon nature ; the natural remedy 
would be to fall in love with the moon and the 
night, and find our love requited. 

I anticipate a more thorough sympathy with 
nature when my thigh bones shall strew the 
ground like the boughs which the wind has scat- 
tered. These troublesome humors will flower 
into early anemones, and perhaps in the very 
lachrymal sinus, nourished by its juices, some 
young pine or oak will strike root. 

What I call pain, when I speak in the spirit 
of a partisan, and not as a citizen of the body, 
would be serene being, if our interests were one. 
Sickness is civil war. We have no external 
foes. Even death will take place when I make 
peace with my body, and set my seal to that 
treaty which transcendent justice has so long re- 
quired. I shall at length join interest with it. 

The mind never makes a great effort without 
a corresponding energy of the body. When 
great resolves are entertained, its nerves are not 
relaxed, nor its limbs reclined. 

Jan. 19, 1854. ... In Josselyn's account of 
his voyage from London to Boston in 1638, he 
says, " June, the first day in the afternoon, very 



WINTER. 203 

thick, foggie weather, we sailed by an enchanted 
island," etc. This kind of remark, to be found 
in so many accounts of voyages, appears to be a 
fragment of tradition come down from the ear- 
liest account of Atlantis and its disappearance. 

Varro, having enumerated certain writers on 
agriculture, says accidentally that they wrote 
" soluta ratione," *. e., in prose. This suggests 
the difference between the looseness of prose 
and the precision of poetry. A perfect expres- 
sion requires a particular rhythm or measure for 
which no other can be substituted. The prosaic 
is always a loose expression. 

Jan. 19, 1856. Another bright winter day. 
p. M. To river to get some water-asclepias, to see 
what birds' nests are made of. . . . 

As I came home through the village at 8.15 
P. M., by a bright moonlight, the moon nearly full 
and not more than 18° from the zenith, the wind 
N. W. but not strong, and the air pretty cold, 
I saw the melon -rind arrangement of the clouds 
on a larger scale and more distinct than ever 
before. There were eight or ten courses of 
clouds, so broad that with equal intervals of 
blue sky they occupied the whole width of 
the heavens, broad white cirro-stratus, in per- 
fectly regular curves from W. to E. across the 
whole sky. The four middle ones, occupying 
the greater part of the visible cope, were par- 



204 WINTER. 

ticularly distinct. They were all as regularly 
arranged as the lines on a melon, and with much 
straighter sides, as if cut with a knife. I hear 
that it attracted the attention of those who were 
abroad at 7 P. M., and now at 9 P. M. it is scarcely 
less remarkable. On one side of the heavens, 
N. or S., the intervals of blue look almost black 
by contrast. There is now, at nine, a strong wind 
from the N. W. Why do these bars extend 
east and west ? Is it the influence of the sun 
which set so long ago ? or of the rotation of the 
earth ? The bars which I notice so often morn- 
ing and evening are apparently connected with 
the sun at those periods. 

Jan. 20, 1841. Disappointment will make us 
conversant with the nobler part of our nature. 
It will chasten us and prepare us to meet acci- 
dent on higher ground the next time. As Han- 
nibal taught the Romans the art of war, so is 
all misfortune only a stepping-stone to fortune. 
The desultory moments which are the grimmest 
feature of misfortune are a step before me on 
which I should set foot, and not stumbling- 
blocks in the path. To extract its whole good, 
I must be disappointed with the best fortune, 
and not be bribed by sunshine or health. 

O Happiness, what is the stuff thou art 
made of ? — Is it not gossamer and floating 
spider's webs ? a crumpled sunbeam — a coiled 



WINTER. 205 

dew-line settling on some flower? What mo- 
ments will not supply the reel ■ from which thou 
mayst be wound off ? Thou art as subtle as 
the pollen of flowers and the sporules of the 
fungi. 

When I meet a person unlike me, I find my- 
self wholly in the unlikeness. In what I am 
unlike others, in that I am. 

When we ask for society, we do not want the 
double of ourselves, but the complement rather. 
Society should be additive and helpful. We 
would be reinforced by its alliance. True friends 
will know how to use each other in this respect, 
and never barter or exchange their common 
wealth, just as barter is unknown in families. 
They will not dabble in the general coffers, but 
each will put his finger into the private coffer of 
the other. They will be most familiar, they will 
be most unfamiliar, for they will be so one and 
single that common themes and things will have 
to be bandied between them, but in silence they 
will digest them as one mind ; they will at the 
same time be so true and double that each will 
be to the other as admirable and as inaccessible 
as a star. When my friend comes, I view his 
orb " through optic glass " "at evening from 
the top of Fesole." After the longest earthly 
period, he will still be in apogee to me. — But 
we should so meet ourselves as we meet our 



206 WINTER. 

friends, and still ever seek for ourselves in that 
which is above us and unlike us. So only shall 
we see what has been well called the light of our 
own countenances. 

Jan. 20, 1853. . . . Ah, our indescribable win- 
ter sky, between emerald (?) and amber (?), such 
as summer never sees. What more beautiful or 
soothing to the eye than those finely divided . . . 
clouds, like down or loose-spread cotton batting, 
now reaching up from the west above my head ! 
Beneath this a different stratum, all whose ends 
are curved like spray or wisps. All kinds of 
figures are drawn on the blue ground with this 
fibrous white paint. 

Jan. 20, 1855. ... In certain places, stand- 
ing on their snowiest side, the woods were incred- 
ibly fair, white as alabaster. Indeed, the young 
pines reminded you of the purest statuary, and 
the stately, full-grown ones, towering around, 
affected you as if you stood in a Titanic sculp- 
tor's studio, so purely and delicately white, trans- 
mitting the light, their dark trunks all concealed ; 
and in many places where the snow lay on with- 
ered oak leaves between you and the light, va- 
rious delicate, fawn-colored tints blending with 
the white enhanced the beauty. 

. . . How new all things seem! Here is a 
broad, shallow pool in the fields which yesterday 
was slush, now converted into a soft, white, 



WINTER. 207 

fleecy snow ice. ... It is like the beginning of the 
world. There is nothing hackneyed where a new 
snow can come and cover all the landscape. . . . 
The world is not only new to the eye, but is still 
as at creation. Every blade and leaf is hushed, 
not a bird or insect is heard, only, perchance, a 
faint tinkling sleigh-bell in the distance. . . . The 
snow still adheres conspicuously to the N. W. 
sides of the stems of the trees, quite up to their 
summits, with a remarkably sharp edge in that 
direction. ... It would be about as good as 
a compass to steer by in a cloudy day or by 
night. . . . 

We come upon the tracks of a man and dog, 
which I guessed to be C.'s. Further still, . . . 
as I was showing to T. under a bank the single 
flesh-Colored or pink apothecium of a Beomyces 
which was not covered by the snow, I saw the 
print of C.'s foot by its side, and knew that his 
eyes had rested on it that afternoon. It was 
about the size of a pin's head. Saw also where 
he had examined the lichens on the rails. . . . 

Very musical and sweet now, like a horn, is 
the hounding of a fox-hound heard in some dis- 
tant wood, while I stand listening in some far 
solitary and silent field. 

I doubt if I can convey an idea of the appear- 
ance of the woods yesterday. As you stood in 
their midst, and looked round on their boughs 



208 WINTER. 

and twigs laden with snow, it seemed as if there 
could be none left to reach the ground. These 
countless zigzag white arms crossing each other 
at every possible angle completely closed up the 
view like a light drift within three or four rods 
on every side, the wintriest prospect imaginable. 
That snow which sifted down into the wood 
paths was much drier and lighter than else- 
where. 

Jan. 20, 1856. In my experience I have 
found nothing so truly impoverishing as what is 
called wealth, i. e., the command of greater 
means than you had before possessed, however 
few and slight still, for you thus inevitably ac- 
quire a more expensive habit of living, and even 
the very same necessaries and comforts cost you 
more than they once did. Instead of gaining, 
you have lost some independence, and if your 
income should be suddenly lessened, you would 
find yourself poor, though possessed of the same 
means which once made you rich. Within the 
last five years I have had the command of a lit- 
tle more money than in the previous five years, 
for I have sold some books and some lectures, 
yet I have not been a whit better fed or clothed 
or warmed or sheltered, not a whit richer, except 
that I have been less concerned about my living ; 
but perhaps my life has been the less serious 
for it, and to balance it, I feel now that there is 



WINTER. 209 

a possibility of failure. Who knows but I may 
come upon the town, if, as is likely, the pub- 
lic want no more of my books or lectures, as, 
with regard to the last, is already the case. Be- 
fore, I was much likelier to take the town upon 
my shoulders. That is, I have lost some of my 
independence on them, when they would say that 
I had gained an independence. If you wish to 
give a man a sense of poverty, give him a thou- 
sand dollars. The next hundred dollars he gets 
will not be worth more than ten that he used to 
get. Have pity on him. Withhold your gift. 

p. M. Up river. ... It is now good walking 
on the river, for though there has been no thaw 
since the snow came, a great part of it has been 
converted into snow-ice by sinking the old ice 
beneath the water. The crust of the rest is 
stronger than in the fields, because the snow is 
so shallow and has been so moist. The river 
is thus an advantage as a highway, not only in 
summer, and when the ice is bare in winter, but 
even when the snow lies very deep in the fields. 
It is invaluable to the walker, being now, not 
only the most interesting, but, excepting the 
narrow and unpleasant track in the highway, 
the only practicable route. The snow never lies 
so deep over it as elsewhere, and, if deep, it sinks 
the ice and is soon converted into snow-ice to a 
great extent, beside being blown out of the river 



210 WINTER. 

valley. Neither is it drifted here. Here, where 
you cannot walk at all in the summer, is better 
walking than elsewhere in the winter. But what 
a different aspect has the river's brim from what 
it wears in summer ! I do not at this moment 
hear an insect's hum, nor see a bird or a flower. 
That museum of animal and, vegetable life, a 
meadow, is now reduced to a uniform level of 
white snow, with only half a dozen kinds of 
shrubs and weeds rising here and there above it. 

Jan. 20, 1857. ... I hear that Boston har- 
bor froze over on the 18th down to Fort Inde- 
pendence. 

The river has been frozen everywhere except 
at the very few swiftest places since about De- 
cember 18th, and everywhere since about January 
1st. 

At E. W. E.'s this evening at about 6 p. M., 
I was called out to see E.'s cave in the snow. It 
was a hole about two and a half feet wide and 
six feet long into a drift, a little winding, and 
he had got a lamp at the inner extremity. I 
observed as I approached iu a course at right 
angles with the length of the cave, that its mouth 
was lit as if the light were close to it, so that I 
did not suspect its depth. Indeed, the light of 
this lamp was remarkably reflected and distrib- 
uted. The snowy walls were one universal re- 
flector with countless facets. I think that one 



WINTER. 211 

lamp would light sufficiently a hall built of this 
material. The snow about the mouth of the 
cave within had the yellow color of the flame to 
me approaching, as if the lamp were close to it. 
We afterward buried the lamp in a little crypt 
in this snow-drift, and walled it in, and found 
that its light was visible even in this twilight 
through fifteen inches thickness of snow. The 
snow was all aglow with it. If it had been 
darker, probably it would have been visible 
through a much greater thickness. — But what 
was most surprising to me, when E. crawled into 
the extremity of his cave, and shouted at the top 
of his voice, it sounded ridiculously faint, as if 
he were a quarter of a mile off. At first I could 
not believe that he spoke loud, but we all of us 
crawled in by turns, and though our heads were 
only six feet from those outside, our loudest 
shouting only amused and surprised them. Ap- 
parently the porous snow drank up all the sound. 
The voice was in fact muffled by the surround- 
ing snow walls, and I saw that we might lie in 
that hole screaming for assistance in vain while 
travelers were passing along twenty feet distant. 
It had the effect of ventriloquism. So you need 
only make a snow house in your yard and pass 
an hour in it, to realize a good deal of Esqui- 
maux life. 

Jan. 20, 1859. . . . Among four or five pick- 



212 WINTER. 

erel in a " well " on the river, I see one with 
distinct transverse bars, as I look down on its 
back, not quite across the back, but plain as 
they spring from the side of the back, while all 
the others are uniformly dark above. Is not the 
former Esox fasciatus f . . . 

The green of the ice and water begins to be 
visible about half an hour before sunset. Is it 
produced by the reflected blue of the sky min- 
gling with the yellow or pink of the setting sun ? 

Jan. 21, 1838. Man is the artificer of his own 
happiness. Let him beware how he complains 
of the disposition of circumstances, for it is his 
own disposition he blames. If this is sour, or 
that rough, or the other steep, let him think if 
it be not his work. If his look curdles all 
hearts, let him not complain of a sour reception ; 
if he hobble in his gait, let him not grumble at 
the roughness of the way; if he is weak in the 
knees, let him not call the hill steep. This was 
the pith of the inscription on the wall of the 
Swedish inn, " You will find at Trolhate excel- 
lent bread, meat, and wine, provided you bring 
them with you ! " 

Every leaf and twig was this morning cov- 
ered with a sparkling ice armor. Even the 
grasses in exposed fields were hung with innu- 
merable diamond pendants which jingled mer- 
rily when brushed by the foot of the traveler. 



WINTER. 213 

... It was as if some superincumbent stratum 
of the earth had been removed in the night, 
exposing to light a bed of untarnished crystals. 
The scene changed at every step, or as the head 
was inclined to the right or to the left. There 
were the opal, and sapphire, and emerald, and 
jasper, and beryl, and topaz, and ruby. 

Such is beauty ever, neither here nor there, 
now nor then, neither in Rome nor in Athens, 
but wherever there is a soul to admire. If I 
seek her elsewhere because I do not find her at 
home, my search will be a fruitless one. 

Jan. 21, 1841. We can render men the best 
assistance by letting them see how rare a thing 
it is to need any assistance. I am not in haste 
to help men more than God is. If they will not 
help themselves, shall I become their abettor ? 

If I have unintentionally injured the feelings 
of any, or profaned their sacred character, we 
shall be necessitated to know each other better 
than before. I have gained a glorious vantage- 
ground then, and to the other the shaft which 
carried the wound will bear its own remedy with 
it, for we cannot be profaned without the con- 
sciousness that we have a holy fane for our asy- 
lum somewhere. Would that sincere words 
might always drive men thus to earth them- 
selves ! 

Jan. 21, 1852. ... To record truths which 



214 WINTER. 

have tlie same relation and value to the next 
world, i. e., the world of thought and of the soul, 
that political news have to this. . . . ' 

Heard lecture to-night. . . . Why did 

I not like it better? Can I deny that it was 
good? Perhaps I am bound to account to my- 
self at least for any lurking dislike for what 
others admire, and I am not prepared to find 
fault with. Well, I did uot like it then because 
it did not make me like it, it did not carry 
me away captive. The lecturer was not simple 
enough. For the most part, the manner over- 
bore, choked off, stifled, put out of sight the 
matter. I was inclined to forget that he was 
speaking, conveying ideas, thought there had 
been an intermission. Never endeavor to sup- 
ply the tone which you think proper for certain 
sentences. It is as if a man whose mind was at 
ease should supply the tones and gestures for a 
man in distress who found only the words. One 
makes a speech and another behind him makes 
the gestures. — Then he reminded me of Emer- 
son, and I could not afford to be reminded of 
Christ himself. Yet who can deny that it was 
good ? But it was that intelligence, ■ that way 
of viewing things (combined with much pecul- 
iar talent}, which is the common property of 
this generation. A man does best when he is 
most himself. 



WINTER. 215 

I never realized so distinctly as at this mo- 
ment that I am peacefully parting company with 
the best friend I ever had, from the fact that 
each is pursuing his proper path. I perceive 
that it is possible we may have a better under- 
standing now than when we were more at one, 
not expecting such essential agreement as before. 
Simply our paths diverge. 

Jan. 21, 1853. A fine, still, warm moonlight 
evening. . . . Moon not yet full. To the woods 
by the Deep Cut at nine o'clock. The blueness 
of the sky at night is an everlasting surprise to 
me, suggesting the constant presence and preva- 
lence of light in the firmament, the color it wears 
by day, that we see through the veil of night to 
the constant blue. The night is not black when 
the air is clear, but blue still, as by day. The 
great ocean of light and ether is unaffected by 
our partial night. . . . At midnight I see into 
the universal day. 

I am somewhat oppressed and saddened by 
the sameness and apparent poverty of the heav- 
ens, that these irregular and few geometrical 
figures which the constellations make are no 
other than those seen by the Chaldsean shep- 
herds. I pine for a new world in the heavens 
as well as on the earth, and though it is some 
consolation to hear of the wilderness of stars 
and systems invisible to the naked eye, yet the 



216 WINTER. 

sky does not make that impression of variety 
and wildness that even the forest does, as it 
ought to do. It makes an impression rather of 
simplicity and unchangeableness, as of eternal 
laws. ... I seem to see it pierced with visual 
rays from a thousand observatories. It is more 
the domain of science than of poetry. It is 
the stars as not known to science that I would 
know, the stars which the lonely traveler 
knows. The Chaldsean shepherds saw not the 
same stars which I see, and if I am elevated in 
the least toward the heavens, I do not accept 
their classification of them. I am not to be dis- 
tracted by the names which they have imposed. 
The sun which I know is not Apollo, nor is the 
evening star Venus. The heaven should be as 
new, at least, as the world is new. The clas- 
sification of the stars is old and musty. It is as 
if a mildew had taken place in the heavens, 
as if the stars, so closely packed, had heated 
and moulded there. If they appear fixed, it is 
because men have been thus necessitated to see 
them. ... A few good anecdotes is our science, 
with a few imposing statements respecting dis- 
tance and size, and little or nothing about the 
stars as they concern man. It teaches how he 
may survey a country or sail a ship, and not 
how he may steer his life. Astrology contained 
the germ of a higher truth than this. It may 



WINTER. 217 

happen that the stars are more significant and 
truly celestial to the teamster than to the astron- 
omer. . . . Children study astronomy at the 
district school, and learn that the sun is ninety- 
five millions of miles distant and the like, a 
statement which never made any impression on 
me, because I never walked it, and which I can- 
not be said to believe. But the sun shines nev- 
ertheless. Though observatories are multiplied, 
the heavens receive very little attention. The 
naked eye may easily see farther than the 
armed. It depends on who looks through it. 
Man's eye is the true star-finder, the comet- 
seeker. No superior telescope to this has been 
invented. In those big ones, the recoil is equal 
to the force of the discharge. " The poet's eye 
in a fine frenzy rolling " ranges from earth to 
heaven, which the astronomer's eye not often 
does. It does not see far beyond the dome of 
the observatory. . 

As I walk the railroad causeway, I am dis- 
turbed by the sound of my steps on the frozen 
ground. I wish to hear the silence of the night. 
I cannot walk with my ears covered, for the 
silence is something positive and to be heard. I 
must stand still and listen with open ear, far 
from the noises of the village, that the night 
may make its impression on me, a fertile and 
eloquent silence. Sometimes the silence is 



218 WINTER. 

merely negative, an arid and barren waste in 
which I shudder, where no ambrosia grows. I 
must hear the whispering of a myriad voices. 
Silence alone is worthy to be heard. It is of 
various depths and fertility like soil. Now it 
is a mere Sahara where men perish of hunger 
and thirst, now a fertile bottom and prairie of 
the West. As I leave the village, drawing 
nearer to the woods, I listen from time to 
time to hear the hounds of silence baying the 
moon, to know if they are on the track of any 
game. If there is no Diana in the night, what 
is it worth? . . . The silence sings. It is mu- 
sical. I remember a night when it was audible. 
I heard the unspeakable. . . . 

If night is the mere negation of day, I hear 
nothing but my own steps in it. Death is with 
me, and life far away. If the elements are not 
human, if the winds do not sing or sigh, as the 
stars twinkle, my life runs shallow. I measure 
the depth of my own being. . . . 

When I enter the woods, I am fed by the 
variety, the forms of the trees above against the 
blue, with the stars seen through the pines, like 
the lamps hung on them in an illumination, the 
somewhat indistinct and misty fineness of the 
pine tops, the finely divided spray of the oaks, 
etc., and the shadow of all these on the snow. 
The first shadow I came to, I thought was a black 



WINTER. 219 

place where the woodchoppers had had a fire. 
These myriad shadows checker the white ground 
and enhance the brightness of the enlightened 
portions. See the shadows of these young oaks 
which have lost half their leaves, more beau- 
tiful than the trees themselves, like the shadow 
of a chandelier, and motionless as fallen leaves 
on the snow; but shake the tree, and all is in 
motion. 

In this stillness and at this distance I hear 
the nine o'clock bell in Bedford, five miles off, 
which I might never hear in the village ; but 
here its music surmounts the village din and 
has something very sweet and noble and in- 
spiring in it, associated in fact with the hooting 
of owls. 

Returning, I thought I heard the creaking of 
a wagon, just starting from Hubbard's door, and 
rarely musical it sounded. It was the Telegraph 
harp. It began to sound at one spot only. It 
is very fitful, and only sounds when it is in the 
mood. You may go by twenty times both when 
the wind is high and when it is low, and let it blow 
which way it will, and yet hear no strain from it. 
But at another time, at a particular spot, you 
may hear a strain rising and swelling on the 
string, which may at last ripen to something 
glorious. The wire will perhaps labor long with 
it before it attains to melody. 



220 WINTER. 

Even the creaking of a wagon in a frosty 
night has music in it which allies it to the highest 
and purest strains of the muse. . . . 

Minott says his mother told him she had seen 
a deer come down the hill behind her house, 
where J. Moore's now is, and cross the road and 
the meadow in front. Thinks it may have been 
eighty years ago. 

Jan. 21, 1857. ... It is remarkable how 
many tracks of foxes you will see quite near the 
village, where they have been in the night, and 
yet a regular walker will not glimpse one of tener 
than once in eight or ten years. . . . 

As I flounder along the Corner road against 
the root fence, a very large flock of snow bun- 
tings alight with a wheeling flight amid the weeds 
rising above the snow ... a hundred or two of 
them. They run restlessly amid the weeds, so 
that I can hardly get sight of them through my 
glass. Then suddenly all arise and fly only two 
or three rods, alighting within three rods of me. 
They keep up a constant twittering. It is as if 
they were ready any instant for a longer flight, 
but their leader had not so ordered it. Sud- 
denly away they sweep again, and I see them 
alight in a distant field where the weeds rise 
above the snow, but in a few minutes they have 
left that also, and gone farther north. Beside 
their rippling note, they have a vibratory twitter, 



WINTER. 221 

and from the loiterers you have a quite tender 
peep, as they fly after the vanishing flock. 
What independent creatures ! They go seeking 
their food from north to south. If New Hamp- 
shire and Maine are covered deeply with snow, 
they scale down to Massachusetts for their 
breakfast. Not liking the grains in this field, 
away they dash to another distant one, attracted 
by the weeds rising above the snow. Who can 
guess in what field, by what river or mountain, 
they breakfasted this morning. They did not 
seem to regard me so near, but as they went off, 
their wave actually broke over me as a rock. 
They have the pleasure of society at their feasts, 
a hundred dining at once, busily talking while 
eating, remembering what occurred in Grinnell 
Land. As they flew past me, they presented a 
pretty appearance, somewhat like broad bars of 
white alternating with bars of black. 

Jan. 22, 1852. Having occasion to get up 
and light a lamp in the middle of a sultry night, 
perhaps to exterminate mosquitoes, I observed a 
stream of large black ants passing up and down 
one of the bare corner posts, those descending 
having their large white eggs or larvae in their 
mouths, the others making haste up for another 
load. I supposed that they had found the heat 
so great just under the roof as to compel them 
to remove their progeny to a cooler place. 



r 



222 WINTER. 

They had evidently taken and communicated the 
resolution to improve the coolness of the night 
to remove their young to a cooler and safer 
locality, one stream running up, and another 
down, with great industry. 

But why did I change ? Why did I leave the 
woods ? I do not think that I can tell. I have 
often wished myself back. I do not know any 
better how I came to go there. Perhaps it is 
none of my business, even if it is yours. Per- 
haps I wanted change. There was a little stag- 
nation, it may be, about two o'clock in the after- 
noon. The world's axle creaked, as if it wanted 
greasing, as if the oxen labored with the wain, 
and could hardly get their load over the ridge of 
the day. Perhaps if I lived there much longer, 
1 might live there forever. One would think 
twice before he accepted heaven on such terms. 
A ticket to heaven must include a ticket to 
Limbo, Purgatory, and Hell. Your ticket to 
the Boxes admits you to the Pit also. 

How much botany is indebted to the Ara- 
bians. A great part of our common names of 
plants appear to be Arabic. . . . 

The pleasures of the intellect are permanent, 
the pleasures of the heart are transitory. — 
My friend invites me to read my papers to him. 
Gladly would I read, if he would hear. He 
must not hear coarsely, but finely, suffering not 



WINTER. 223 

the least to pass through the sieve of hearing. 
— To associate with one for years with joy who 
never met you thought with thought ! An over- 
flowing sympathy, while yet there is no intellect- 
ual communion. Could we not meet on higher 
ground with the same heartiness? It is dull 
work reading to one who does not apprehend 
you. How can it go on ? I will still abide by 
the truth in my converse and intercourse with 
my friends, whether I am so brought nearer to 
or removed farther from them. I shall not be 
less your friend for answering you truly, though 
coldly. Even the estrangement of friends is 
a fact to be serenely contemplated, as in the 
course of Nature. It is of no use to lie either 
by word or action. Is not the everlasting truth 
agreeable to you? 

To set down such choice experiences that my 
own writings may inspire me, and at last I may 
make wholes of parts. Certainly it is a distinct 
profession to rescue from oblivion and to fix 
the sentiments and thoughts which visit all men 
more or less generally. That the contemplation 
of the unfinished picture may suggest its har- 
monious completion. Associate reverently and 
as much as you can with your loftiest thoughts. 
Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is 
a nest-egg by the side of which more will be 
laid. . . . Perhaps this is the main value of a 



224 WINTER. 

habit of writing, of keeping a journal, that so 
we remember our best hours, and stimulate our- 
selves. My thoughts are my company. They 
have a certain individuality and separate exist- 
ence, age, personality. Having by chance re- 
corded a few disconnected thoughts, and then 
brought them into juxta position, they suggest a 
whole new field in which it was possible to labor 
and think. Thought begat thought. . . . 

When a man asks me a question, I look him 
in the face. If I do not see any inquiry there, 
I cannot answer it. A man asked me about the 
coldness of this winter compared with others, 
last night. I looked at him. His face expressed 
no more curiosity or relationship to me than a 
custard pudding. I made him a random an- 
swer. I put him off till he was in earnest. He 
wanted to make conversation. . . . 

That in the preaching or mission of the Jes- 
uits in Canada which converted the Indians was 
their sincerity. They could not be suspected of 
sinister motives. The savages were not poor 
observers or reasoners. The priests were there- 
fore sure of success, for they had paid the price 
of it. 

We resist no true invitations. They are irre- 
sistible. When my friend asks me to stay, and 
I do not, unless I have another engagement, it 
is because I do not find myself invited. It is 



WINTER. 225 

not in his will to invite me. We should deal 
with the real mood of our friends. I visited 
my friend constantly for many years, and he 
postponed our friendship to trivial engagements, 
so that I saw him not at all. When in after 
years he had leisure to meet me, I did not find 
myself invited to go to him. 

Jan. 22, 1854. . . . Once or twice of late I 
have seen the mother-of-pearl tints and rainbow 
flecks in the western sky. The usual time is 
when the air is clear and pretty cool, about an 
hour before sunset. Yesterday I saw a very 
permanent specimen, like a long knife handle of 
mother-of-pearl, very pale, with an interior blue, 
and rosaceous tinges. I think the summer sky 
never exhibits this so finely. 

No second snow-storm in the winter can be so 
fair and interesting as the first. 

Jan. 22, 1855. Heavy rain in the night and 
half of to-day, with very high wind from the 
southward washing off the snow, and filling the 
road with water. . . . It is very exciting to see 
where was so lately only ice and snow dark, 
wavy lakes dashing in furious torrents through 
the commonly dry channels under the cause- 
ways, to hear only the rush and roar of waters, 
and look down on mad billows where in summer 
are commonly only dry pebbles. . . . The musk- 
rats driven out of their holes by the water are 



226 WINTER. 

exceedingly numerous. Yet many of their 
cabins are above water on the S. branch. Here 
there are none. We saw fifteen or twenty of 
these creatures at least between Derby's bridge 
and the Tarbel spring, either swimming with 
surprising swiftness up or down or across the 
stream, to avoid us, or sitting at the water's 
edge, or resting on the edge of the ice, or on 
some alder bough just on the surface. One re- 
freshed himself after his cold swim regardless of 
us, probed his fur with his nose, and scratched 
his ear like a dog. They frequently swam to- 
ward an apple-tree in the midst of the water, 
in the vain hope of finding a resting place and 
refuge there. I saw one looking quite a red- 
dish brown, busily feeding on some plant just at 
the water's edge, thrusting his head under for it. 

But I hear the sound of G 's gun up stream, 

and see his bag stuffed out with their dead 
bodies. 

Jan. 22, 1857. ... I asked Minott about the 
cold Friday. He said " it was plaguey cold. It 
stung like a wasp." He remembers seeing them 
toss up water in a shoemaker's shop, usually a 
very warm place, and when it struck the floor 
it was frozen, and rattled like so many shot. 

Jan. 22, 1859. . . . The muskrat hunter last 
night with his increased supply of powder and 
shot, and boat turned up somewhere on the 



WINTER. 227 

bank, now that the river is rapidly rising, 
dreaming of his exploits to-day in shooting 
mnskrats, of the great pile of dead rats that 
will weigh down his boat before night when he 
will return wet and weary and weather-beaten 
to his hut with an appetite for his supper, and 
for much sluggish . . . social intercourse with 
his fellows, even he, dark, dull, much battered 
flint as he is, is an inspired man to his extent 
now, perhaps the most inspired by this freshet 
of any, and the Musketaquid meadows cannot 
spare him. There are poets of all kinds and 
degrees, little known to each other. The Lake 
School is not the only or the principal one. 
They love various things ; some love beauty and 
some love rum. Some go to Rome, and some 
go a-fishing, and are sent to the house of correc- 
tion once a month. They keep up their fires by 
means unknown to me. I know not their com- 
ings and goings. How can I tell what violets 
they watch for ? I know them wild, and ready 
to risk all when their muse invites. The most 
sluggish will be up early enough then, and face 
any amount of wet and cold. I meet these 
gods of the river and woods with sparkling 
faces (like Apollo's), late from the house of 
correction, it may be, carrying whatever mystic 
and forbidden bottles or other vessels concealed, 
while the dull, regular priests are steering their 



228 WINTER. 

parish rafts in a prose mood. What care I 
to see galleries full of representations of heathen 
gods, when I can see actual living ones, by an 
infinitely superior artist. ... If you read the 
Rig Veda, oldest of books, as it were, describing 
a very primitive people and condition of things, 
you hear in their prayers of a still older, more 
primitive and aboriginal race in their midst and 
roundabout, warring on them, and seizing their 
flocks and herds, infesting their pastures. Thus 
is it in another sense in all communities, and 
hence the prisons and police. I hear these guns 
going to-day, and I must confess they are to me 
a springlike and exhilarating sound, like the 
cock-crowing, though each one may report the 
death of a muskrat. This, methinks, or the 
like of this, with whatever mixture of dross, is 
the real morning or evening hymn that goes up 
from these vales to-day, and which the stars 
echo. This is the best sort of glorifying God 
and enjoying Him that at all prevails here to-day. 
... As a mother loves to see her children take 
nourishment and expand, so God loves to see 
his children thrive on the nutriment He has fur- 
nished them. . . . These aboriginal men cannot 
be repressed, but under some guise or other they 
survive and reappear continually. Just as sim- 
ply as the crow picks up the worms which are 
over the fields, having been washed out by the 



WINTER. 229 

thaw, these men pick up the muskrats that have 
been washed out of the banks. And to some 
such ends men plow and sail, and powder and 
shot are made, and the grocer exists to retail 
them, though he may think himself much more 
the deacon of some church. 

Jan. 22, 1860. Up river to Fair Haven 
Pond. . . . Where the sedge grows rankly and 
is uncut, as along the edge of the river and 
meadows, what fine coverts are made for mice, 
etc., at this season. It is arched over, and the 
snow rests chiefly on its ends, while the middle 
part is elevated from six inches to a foot, and 
forms a thick thatch, as it were, even when all 
is covered with snow, under which the mice, etc., 
can run freely, out of the way of the wind and 
of foxes. After a pretty deep snow has just 
partially melted, you are surprised to find, as 
you walk through such a meadow, how high and 
lightly the sedge lies up, as if there had been 
no pressure upon it. It grows, perhaps, in 
dense tufts or tussocks, and when it falls over, 
it forms a thickly thatched roof. 

Xature provides shelter for her creatures in 
various wavs. If the muskrat has no longer 
extensive fields of weeds and grass to crawl in, 
what an extensive range it has under the ice of 
the meadows and river sides ; for the water 
settling directly after freezing, an icy roof of 



230 WINTER. 

indefinite extent is thus provided for it, and it 
passes almost its whole winter under shelter, out 
of the wind, and invisible to men. 

Jan. 23, 1841. A day is lapsing. I hear 
cockerels crowing in the yard, and see them 
stalking among the chips in the sun. I hear busy 
feet on the floors, and the whole house jars with 
industry. Surely the day is well spent, and the 
time is full to overflowing. Mankind is as busy 
as the flowers in summer, which make haste to 
unfold themselves in the forenoon, and close 
their petals in the afternoon. The momentous 
topics of human life are always of secondary 
importance to the business in hand, just as car- 
penters discuss politics between the strokes of 
the hammer, while they are shingling a roof. 
The squeaking of the pump sounds as necessary 
as the music of the spheres. The solidity and 
apparent necessity of this routine insensibly 
recommend it to me. It is like a cane or a 
cushion for the infirm, and in view of it all are 
infirm. If there were but one erect and solid- 
standing tree in the woods, all creatures would 
go to rub themselves against it, and make sure 
of their footing. Routine is a ground to stand 
on, a wall to retreat to. We cannot draw on 
our boots without bracing ourselves against it. 
Our health requires that we should recline on it 
from time to time. When we are in it, the 



WINTER. 231 

hand stands still on the face of the clock, and 
we grow like corn in the genial darkness and 
silence of the night. Our weakness wants it, 
but our strength uses it. Good for the body 
is the work of the body, and good for the soul, 
the work of the soul, and good for either, the 
work of the other. Let them not call hard 
names, nor know a divided interest. 

When I detect a beauty in any of the recesses 
of nature, I am reminded by the serene and 
retired spirit in which it requires to be contem- 
plated of the inexpressible privacy of a life. 
How silent and unambitious it is ! The beauty 
there is in mosses will have to be considered 
from the holiest, quietest nook. — The gods 
delight in stillness. . . . My truest, serenest 
moments are too still for emotion. They have 
woolen feet. In all our lives, we live under the 
hill, and if we are not gone, we live there still. 

Jan. 23, 1852. . . . Deep Cut going to Fair 
Haven Hill. No music from the telegraph harp 
on the causeway where the wind is strong, but 
in the Cut this cold day I hear memorable strains. 
What must the birds and beasts think where 
it passes through woods, who heard only the 
squeaking of the trees before ? I should think 
that these strains would get into their music at 
last. Will not the mocking-bird be heard one 
day inserting this strain in his medley ? It in- 



232 WINTER. 

toxicates me. Orpheus is still alive. All poetry 
and mythology revive. The spirits of all bards 
sweep the strings. I hear the clearest silver 
lyre-like tones, Tyrtaean tones. ... It is the 
most glorious music I ever heard. All those 
bards revive and flourish again in those five min- 
utes in the Deep Cut. The breeze came through 
an oak still waving its dry leaves. The very 
fine, clear tones seemed to come from the very 
core and pith of the telegraph pole. I know 
not but it is my own chords that tremble so 
divinely. There are barytones and high, sharp 
tones, and some come sweeping seemingly from 
farther along the wire. The latent music of 
the earth had found here a vent, music iEolian. 
There were two strings in fact, one each side. 
. . . Thus, as ever, the finest uses of things are 
the accidental. Mr. Morse did not invent this 
music. . . . 

There are some whose ears help me so that 
my things have a rare significance when I read 
to them. It is almost too good a hearing, so 
that, for the time, I regard my own writing 
from too favorable a point of view. 

Jan. 23, 1854. Love tends to purify and 
sublime itself. It mortifies and triumphs over 
the flesh, and the bond of its union is holiness. 

The increased length of the days is very 
observable of late. What is a winter unless 



WINTER. 233 

you have risen and gone abroad frequently 
before sunrise and by starlight. — Varro speaks 
of what he calls, I believe, before-light (antelu- 
cana) occupations in winter, on the farm. Such 
is especially milking in this neighborhood. 
Speaking of the rustic villa, he says, You must 
see that the kitchen is convenient, " because some 
things are to be done there in the winter before 
daylight (antelucanis temporibus), food is to be 
prepared and taken." In the study, are not 
some things to be done before daylight, and a 
certain food to be prepared there ? 

Jan. 23, 1857. The coldest day that I re- 
member recording, clear and bright, but very 
high wind, blowing the snow. Ink froze ; had 
to break the ice in my pail with a hammer. 
Thermometer at 6§ A. M., — 18°, at 10£, —14°, 
at 12f, —9°, at 4 p. m., — 5^°; at 7| p. m., —8°. 
I may safely say that — 5° has been the highest 
temperature to-day by our thermometer. Walk- 
ing this P. M., I notice that the face inclines to 
stiffen. . . . On first coming out in very cold 
weather, I find that I breathe fast, though with- 
out walking faster or exerting myself more than 
usual. 

Jan. 24, 1857. About 6£ a. m. [mercury (?)] 
in the bulb of thermometer, Smith's on the same 
nail, —30°. At 9 ? a. m., ours —18°, Smith's 
— 22°, which indicates that ours would have 



234 WINTER. 

stood at 26° at 6^ a. m., if the thermometer had 
been long enough. At 11^ A. M., ours was — 1°, 
at 4 p. m., +12°. 

Jan. 25, 1857. Still another very cold morn- 
ing. Smith's thermometer over ours, at — 29°, 
[mercury ?] in bulb of ours. But about 7 ours 
was 18°, and Smith's at 24°. Ours, therefore, 
at first, about —23°. 

Jan. 26, 1857. Another cold morning. None 
looked early, but about 8, it was — 14°. Saw Bos- 
ton Harbor frozen over, as it had been for some 
time. It reminded me of, I think, Parry's Win- 
ter Harbor, with vessels frozen in. Saw thou- 
sands on the ice, a stream of men where they 
were cutting a channel toward the city. Ice said 
to reach fourteen miles. Snow untracked on 
many decks. 

Ice did not finally go out till about February 
15th. 

Jan. 23, 1858. The wonderfully mild and 
pleasant weather continues. The ground has 
been bare since the 11th. This morning was 
colder than before. I have not been able to 
walk up the North Branch this winter, nor along 
the channel of the South Branch at any time. 

P. M. To Saw Mill Brook. A fine afternoon. 
There has been but little use for gloves this win- 
ter, though I have been surveying a great deal 
for three months. The sun and cock-crowing, 
bare ground, etc., remind me of spring. 



WINTER. 235 

Standing on the bridge over the Mill Brook, 
on the Turnpike, there being but little ice on 
the S. side, I see several small water -bugs 
(gyrajis*) swimming about, as in the spring. . . . 

At Ditch Pond, I hear what I suppose to be 
a fox barking, an exceedingly husky, hoarse, 
and ragged note, prolonged perhaps by the echo, 
like a feeble puppy, or even a child endeavoring 
to scream, but checked by fear. Yet it is on 
a high key. It sounds so through the wood, 
while I am in the hollow, that I cannot tell from 
which side it comes. I hear it bark forty or 
fifty times, at least. It is a peculiar sound, 
quite unlike any other woodland sound that I 
know. . . . 

Who can doubt that men are by a certain fate 
what they are, contending with unseen and un- 
imagined difficulties, or encouraged and aided 
by equally mysterious, auspicious circumstances ? 
Who can doubt this essential and innate dif- 
ference between man and man, when he con- 
siders a whole race, like the Indian, inevitably 
and resignedly passing away in spite of our 
efforts to Christianize and educate them ? Indi- 
viduals accept their fate and live according to it 
as the Indian does. Everybody notices that the 
Indian retains his habits wonderfully, is still 
the same man that the discoverers found. The 
fact is, the history of the white man is a history 



236 WINTER. 

of improvement, that of the red man, a history 
of fixed habits or stagnation. 

To insure health, a man's relation to nature 
must come very near to a personal one. He 
must be conscious of a friendliness in her. 
When human friends fail or die, she must stand 
in the gap to him. I cannot conceive of any life 
which deserves the name, unless there is in it a 
certain tender relation to nature. This it is 
which makes winter warm, and supplies society 
in the desert and wilderness. Unless nature 
sympathizes with and speaks to us, as it were, 
the most fertile and blooming regions are bar- 
ren and dreary. . . . I do not see that I can live 
tolerably without affection for nature. If I feel 
no softening toward the rocks, what do they 
signify. . . . 

The dog is to the fox as the white man to the 
red. The former has attained to more clear- 
ness in his bark ; it is more ringing and musical, 
more developed; he explodes the vowels of his 
alphabet better, and besides he has made his 
place so good in the world that he can run with- 
out skulking in the open field. What a smoth- 
ered, ragged, feeble, and unmusical sound is the 
bark of the fox! It seems as if he scarcely 
dared raise his voice lest he should catch the ear 
of his tame cousin and inveterate foe. . . . 

I do not think much of that chemistry that 



WINTER. 237 

can extract corn and potatoes out of a barren 
soil, compared with that which can extract 
thought and sentiment out of the life of a man 
on any soil. 

It is in vain to write of the seasons unless you 
have the seasons in you. 

Jan. 23, 1859 There is a cold N. W. wind, 

and I notice that the snow fleas, which were so 
abundant over this water yesterday, have hopped 
to some lee, i. e., are collected like powder under 
the S. E. side of posts or trees, sticks or ridges 
in the ice. You are surprised to see that they 
manage to get out of the wind. On the S. E. 
side of every such barrier along the shore there 
is a dark line or heap of them. 

Jan. 24, 1841. I almost shrink from the 
arduousness of meeting men erectly day by day. 

Be resolutely and faithfully what you are, be 
humbly what you aspire to be. Be sure you 
give men the best of your wares, though they be 
poor enough, and the gods will help you to lay 
up a better store for the future. Man's noblest 
gift to man is his sincerity, for it embraces his 
integrity also. Let him not dole out of himself 
anxiously to suit their weaker or stronger stom- 
achs, but make a clear gift of himself, and 
empty his coffers at once. I would be in society 
as in the landscape ; in the presence of nature 
there is no reserve nor effrontery. 



238 WINTER. 

Coleridge says of the " ideas spoken out every- 
where in the Old and New Testaments," that 
they " resemble the fixed stars which appear of 
the same size to the naked or the armed eye, the 
magnitude of which the telescope may rather 
seem to diminish than to increase." 

It is more proper for a spiritual fact to have 
suggested an analogous natural one than for the 
natural fact to have preceded the spiritual in 
our minds. 

By spells seriousness will be forced to cut 
capers, and drink a deep and refreshing draught 
of silliness, to turn this sedate day of Lucifer's 
and Apollo's into an all fools' day for Harlequin 
and Cornwallis. The sun does not grudge his 
rays to either, but they are alike patronized by 
the gods. Like overtasked school-boys, all my 
members and nerves and sinews petition thought 
for a recess, and my very thigh bones itch to 
slip away from under me, and run and join in 
the melee. I exult in stark inanity. — We think 
the gods reveal themselves only to sedate and 
musing gentlemen, but not so ; the buffoon in 
the midst of his antics catches unobserved 
glimpses which he treasures for the lonely hour. 
When I have been playing torn fool, I have been 
driven to exchange the old for a more liberal 
and catholic philosophy. 

Jan. 24, 1852. If thou art a writer, write as 



WINTER. 239 

if thy time were short, for it is indeed short, at 
the longest. Improve each occasion when the 
soul is reached. Drain the cup of inspiration 
to its last dregs. Fear no intemperance in that, 
for the years will come when otherwise thou 
wilt regret opportunities unimproved. The 
spring will not last forever. These fertile and 
expanding seasons of thy life, when the rain 
reaches thy root, when thy vigor shoots, when 
thy flower is budding, shall be fewer and farther 
between. Again I say, remember thy creator in 
the days of thy youth. Use and commit to life 
what you cannot commit to memory. I hear the 
tones of my sister's piano below. It reminds me 
of strains which once I heard more frequently, 
when possessed with the inaudible rhythm I 
sought my chamber in the cold, and communed 
with my own thoughts. I feel as if I then re- 
ceived the gifts of the gods with too much indif- 
ference. Why did I not cultivate those fields 
they introduced me to? Does nothing with- 
stand the inevitable march of time? Why did I 
not use my eyes when I stood on Pisgah ? Now 
I hear those strains but seldom. My rhythmical 
mood does not endure. I cannot draw from it 
and return to it in my thought as to a well, all 
the evening or the morning. I cannot dip my pen 
in it. I cannot work the vein, it is so fine and 
volatile. Ah, sweet, ineffable reminiscences. 



240 WINTER. 

In thy journal let there never be a jest. To 
the earnest, there is nothing ludicrous. . . . 

When the telegraph harp trembles and wavers, 
I am most affected, as if it were approaching to 
articulation. It sports so with my heart strings. 
When the harp dies away a little, then I revive 
for it. It cannot be too faint. I almost envy 
the Irish whose shanty in the Cut is so near that 
they can hear this music daily, standing at their 
door. How strange to think that a sound so 
soothing, elevating, educating . . . might have 
been heard sweeping other strings when only the 
red man ranged these fields, might, perchance, in 
course of time have civilized him ! 

Jan. 24, 1856. A journal is a record of ex- 
periences and growth, not a preserve of things 
well done or said. I am occasionally reminded 
of a statement which I have made in conversa- 
tion and immediately forgotten, which would 
read much better than what I put in my jour- 
nal. It is a ripe, dry fruit of long past experi- 
ence which falls from me easily without giving 
pain or pleasure. The charm of the journal must 
consist in a certain greenness, though freshness, 
and not in maturity. Here I cannot afford to 
be remembering what I said or did, my scurf 
cast off, but what I am and aspire to become. 

Reading the hymns of the Rig Yeda, trans- 
lated by Wilson, which consist, in a great 



WINTER. 241 

measure, of simple epithets addressed to the fir- 
mament, or the dawn, or the winds, which mean 
more or less as the reader is more or less alert 
and imaginative, and seeing how widely the va- 
rious translators have differed, they regarding 
not the poetry, but the history and philology, 
dealing with very concise Sanskrit which must 
almost always be amplified to be understood, I 
am sometimes inclined to doubt if the translator 
has not made something out of nothing, whether 
a real idea or sentiment has been thus trans- 
mitted to us from so primitive a period. I doubt 
if learned Germans might not thus edit pebbles 
from the sea-shore into hymns of the Rig Veda, 
and translators translate them accordingly, ex- 
tracting the meaning which the sea has imparted 
to them in very primitive times. While the 
commentators and translators are disputing about 
the meaning of this word or that, I hear only 
the resoundiug of the ancient sea, and put into 
it the deepest meaning I am possessed of, for 
I do not the least care where I get my ideas, or 
what suggests them. . . . 

I have seen many a collection of stately elms 
which better deserved to be represented at the 
General Court than the manikins beneath, 
than the bar-room, the victualing cellar, and 
groceries they overshadowed. When I see their 
magnificent domes miles away in the horizon, 



242 WINTER. 

over intervening valleys and forests, they sug- 
gest a village, a community there. But, after 
all, it is a secondary consideration whether there 
are human dwellings beneath them. These may 
have long since passed away. I find that into 
my idea of the village has entered more of the 
elm than of the human being. They are worth 
many a political borough. They constitute a 
borough. The poor human representative of 
his party sent out from beneath their shade will 
not suggest a tithe of the dignity, the true noble- 
ness and comprehensiveness of view, the sturdi- 
ness and independence, and serene beneficence 
that they do. They look from township to 
township. . . . They battle with the tempests 
of a century. See what scars they bear, what 
limbs they lost before we were born. Yet they 
never adjourn, they steadily vote for their prin- 
ciples, and send their roots farther and wider 
from the same centre. They die at their posts, 
and they leave a tough butt for the choppers to 
exercise themselves about, and a stump which 
serves for their monument. They attend no 
caucus, they make no compromise, they use no 
policy. Their one principle is growth. They 
combine a true radicalism with a true conserva- 
tism. Their radicalism is not a cutting away of 
roots, but a multiplication and extension of them 
under all surrounding institutions. They take 



WINTER. 243 

a firmer hold on the earth that they may rise 
higher into the heavens. . . . Their conserva- 
tism is a dead but solid heart-wood which is 
the pivot and firm column of support to all their 
growth, appropriating nothing to itself, but 
forever, by its support, assisting to extend the 
area of their radicalism. Half a century after 
they are dead at the core, they are preserved by 
radical reforms. They do not, like men, from 
radicals turn conservatives. Their conservative 
part dies out first, their radical and growing 
part survives. They acquire new states and 
territories while the old dominions decay and 
become the habitation of bears and owls and 
coons. 

Jan. 24, 1858. P. M. Nut Meadow Brook. 
The river is broadly open as usual this winter. 
You can hardly say that we have had any sleigh- 
ing at all . . . though five or six inches of snow 
lay on the ground five days after January 6th. 
But I do not quite like this warm weather and 
bare ground at this season. What is a winter 
without snow and ice in this latitude ? The 
bare earth is unsightly. This winter is but un- 
buried summer. . . . 

At Nut Meadow Brook the small sized water- 
bugs are as abundant and active as in sum- 
mer. I see forty or fifty circling together 
in the smooth and sunny bays all along the 



244 WINTER. 

brook. This is something new to me. What 
must they think of this winter ? It is like a 
child waked up and set to playing at midnight. 
They seem more ready than usual to dive to the 
bottom when disturbed. At night, of course, 
they dive to the bottom and bury themselves, 
and if in the morning they perceive no curtain 
of ice drawn over their sky and the pleasant 
weather continues, they gladly rise again and 
resume their gyrations in some sunny bay amid 
the alders and the stubble. I think I never 
noticed them more numerous, but I never looked 
for them so particularly. . . . The sun falling 
thus warmly, for so long, on the open surface of 
the brook tempts them upward gradually. . . . 
What a funny way they have of going to bed. 
They do not take a light and retire up-stairs, 
they go below. Suddenly it is heels up and 
heads down, and they go down to their muddy 
bed, and let the unresting stream flow over them 
in their dreams. They go to bed in another 
element. What a deep slumber must be theirs, 
and what dreams down in the mud there ! So 
the insect life is not withdrawn far off, but a 
warm sun would soon entice it forth. Some- 
times they seem to have a little difficulty in 
making the plunge. May be they are too dry 
to slip under. I saw one floating on its back, 
and it struggled a little while before it righted 



WINTER. 245 

itself. Suppose you were to plot the course of 
one for a day. What kind of a figure would it 
make ? Probably this feat, too, will one day be 
performed by science, that maid of all work. I 
see one chasing a mote, and the wave the crea- 
ture makes always causes the mote to float away 
from it. I would like to know what it is they 
communicate to one another, they who appear 
to value each other's society so much. How 
many water-bugs make a quorum ? How many 
hundreds does their Fourier think it takes to 
make a complete bug? Where did they get 
their backs polished so? They will have oc- 
casion to remember this year, that winter when 
we were waked out of our annual sleep. What 
is their precise hour for retiring ? 

I see stretching from side to side of this 
smooth brook where it is three or four feet wide 
what seems to indicate an invisible waving line, 
like a cobweb, against which the water is heaped 
up a very little. This line is constantly swayed 
to and fro, as by the current or wind, bellying 
forward here and there. I try repeatedly to 
catch and break it with my hand and let the 
water run free, but still to my surprise I clutch 
nothing but fluid, and the imaginary line keeps 
its place. Is it the fluctuating edge of a lighter, 
perhaps more oily, fluid, overflowing a heavier ? 
I see several such lines. It is somewhat like the 



246 WINTER. 

slightest conceivable smooth fall over a dam. I 
must ask the water-bug that glides across it. 
Ah, if I had no more sins to answer for than 
a water-bug ! They are only the small water- 
bugs that I see. They are earlier in the spring 
and apparently hardier than the others. .... 

Between winter and summer there is to my 
mind an immeasurable interval. When I pry 
into the old bank swallow holes to-day, see the 
marks of their bills, and even whole eggs left at 
the bottom, these things affect me as the phe- 
nomena of a former geological period. Yet per- 
chance the very swallow which laid those eggs 
will revisit this hole next spring. The upper 
side of her gallery is a low arch quite firm and 
durable. 

Jan. 24, 1859. ... I see an abundance of 
caterpillars of various kinds on the ice of the 
meadows, many of them large, dark, hairy, with 
longitudinal light stripes, somewhat like the com- 
mon apple one. Many of them are frozen in 
still, some for two thirds their length, though 
all are alive. Yet it has been so cold since the 
rise that you can now cross the channel almost 
anywhere. — I also see a great many of those lit- 
tle brown grasshoppers, and one perfectly green, 
some of them frozen in, but generally on the 
surface, showing ho sign of life, yet when I 
brought them home to experiment on, I found 



WINTER. 247 

them all alive and kicking in my pocket. There 
were also a small kind of reddish wasp quite 
lively on the ice, and other insects. There were 
naked or smooth worms or caterpillars. This 
shows what insects have their winter quarters in 
the meadow grass. This ice is a good field for 
the entomologist. . . . The larger spiders gen- 
erally rest on the ice with all their bags spread, 
but on being touched they gather them up. 

Monday, Jan. 25, 1841. On the morning 
when the wild geese go over I, too, feel the mi- 
gratory instinct strong within me, and anticipate 
the breaking up of winter. If I yielded to this 
impulse, it would surely guide me to summer 
haunts. This indefinite restlessness and flut- 
tering on the perch no doubt prophesy the final 
migration of souls out of nature to a serener 
summer, in long harrows and waving lines, in 
the spring weather, over what fair uplands and 
fertile elysian meadows, winging their way at 
evening, and seeking a resting place with loud 
cackling and uproar. . . . 

We should strengthen and beautify and in- 
dustriously mould our bodies to be fit compan- 
ions of the soul, assist them to grow up like 
trees, and be agreeable and wholesome objects 
in nature. I think if I had had the disposal 
of this soul of man, I should have bestowed it 
sooner on some antelope of the plains than upon 
this sickly and sluggish body. 



248 WINTER. 

Jan. 25, 1852. . . . The cold for some weeks 
Las been intense, ... a Canadian winter. . . . 
But last night and to-day the weather has mod- 
erated. It is glorious to be abroad this after- 
noon, the snow melts on the surface ; the warmth 
of the sun reminds me of summer. The dog 
runs before us on the railroad causeway, and ap- 
pears to enjoy it as much as ourselves. . . . The 
clay in the deep Cut is melting and streaming 
down, glistening in the sun. It is I that melts, 
while the harp sounds ou high. The snow-drifts 
on the west side look like clouds. — "We turned 
down the brook at Heywood's meadow. It was 
worth while to see how the water even in the 
marsh, where the brook is almost stagnant, 
sparkled in this atmosphere, for, though warm, 
it is remarkably clear. Water, which in sum- 
mer would look dark, and perhaps turbid, now 
sparkles like the lakes in November. The 
water is the more attractive, since all around is 
deep snow. The brook here is full of cat-tails, 
Typha latifolia, reed-mace. I found on pulling 
open, or breaking in my hand as one would 
break bread, the still perfect spikes of this fine 
reed, that the flowers were red or crimson at 
their base where united to the stem. When I 
rubbed off what was at first but a thimble full of 
these dry flowerets, they suddenly took in air and 
flashed up like powder, expanding like feathers 



WINTER. 249 

or foam, filling and overflowing my hand to 
which they imparted a sensation of warmth 
quite remarkable. ... I could not tire of re- 
peating the experiment. I think a single one 
would more than fill a half peck measure, if 
they lay as light as at first in the air. It is 
something magical to one who tries it for the 
first time. . . . You do not know at first where 
it all comes from. It is the conjurer's trick in 
nature, equal to taking feathers enough to fill a 
bed out of a hat. Wheu you had done, but yet 
scraped the almost bare stem, they still over- 
flowed your hand as before. ... As the flow- 
erets are opening and liberating themselves, 
showing their red extremities, it has the effect 
of a changeable color. 

Ah, then, the brook beyond, its rippling wa- 
waters and its sunny sands. They made me for- 
get that it was winter. Where springs oozed 
out of the soft bank over the dead leaves and 
the green sphagnum, they had melted the snow, 
or the snow had melted as it fell perchance, and 
the rabbits had sprinkled the mud about on the 
snow. The sun reflected from the sandy, grav- 
elly bottom, sometimes a bright sunny streak 
no bigger than your finger reflected from a rip- 
ple as from a prism, and the sunlight reflected 
from a hundred points of the surface of the rip- 
pling brook, enabled me to realize summer. . . . 



250 WINTER. 

Having gone a quarter of a mile beyond the 
bridge where C. calls this his Spanish Brook, I 
looked back from the top of the hill into this 
deep dell, where the white pines stood thick, 
rising one above another, reflecting the sunlight, 
so soft and warm by contrast with the snow, as 
never in summer, for the idea of warmth pre- 
vailed over the cold which the snow suggested, 
though I saw through and between them to a 
distant snow-clad hill, and also to oaks red with 
their dry leaves, and maple limbs were mingled 
with the pines. I was on the verge of seeing 
something, but I did not. If I had been alone, 
and had had more leisure, I might have seen 
something to report. 

Now we are on Fair Haven, still but a snow 
plain. Far down the river the shadows on Co- 
nantum are bluish. . . . The sun is half an hour 
high, perhaps. Standing near the outlet of the 
pond, I look up and down the river with delight, 
it is so warm, and the air is notwithstanding so 
clear. When I invert my head and look at the 
woods half a mile down the stream, they sud- 
denly sink lower in tne horizon, and are re- 
moved full two miles off. Yet the air is so clear 
that I seem to see every stem and twig with 
beautiful distinctness. The fine tops of the 
trees are so relieved against the sky, that I never 
cease to admire the minute subdivisions. It is 



WINTER. 251 

the same when I look up the stream. A bare 
hickory under Lee's Cliff seen against the sky 
becomes an interesting, even beautiful object to 
behold. I think, where have I been staying all 
these days ? I will surely come here again. 

Jan. 25, 1853. ... I have noticed that 
leaves are green and violets bloom later where a 
bank has been burnt over in the fall, as if the 
fire warmed it. Saw to-day where a creeping 
juniper had been burnt, radical leaves of Johns- 
wort, thistle, clover, a dandelion, etc., as well as 
sorrel and veronica. 

Jan. 25, 1856. ... A closed pitch pine cone, 
gathered January 22d, opened last night in my 
chamber. If you would be convinced how differ- 
ently armed the squirrel is naturally for dealing 
with pitch pine cones, just try to get one open 
with your teeth. He who extracts the seeds 
from a single closed cone, with the aid of a 
knife, will be constrained to confess that the 
squirrel earns his dinner. He has the key to 
this conical and spiny chest of many apart- 
ments. He sits on a post vibrating his tail, 
and twirls it as a plaything. So is a man com- 
monly a locked-up chest to us, to open whom, 
unless we have the key of sympathy, will make 
our hearts bleed. 

Jan. 25, 1858. . . . What a rich book might 
be made about buds, including, perhaps, sprouts. 



252 WINTER. 

The impregnable, vivacious willow catkins, but 
half asleep along the twigs, under the armor of 
their black scales, the birch and oak sprouts, 
the rank and lusty dogwood sprouts, the sound, 
red buds of the blueberry, the small pointed red 
buds, close to the twig, of the panicled androm- 
eda, the large yellowish buds of the swamp pink, 
etc. How healthy and vivacious must he be 
who would treat of these things. 

You must love the crust of the earth on which 
you dwell more than the sweet crust of any 
bread or cake ; you must be able to extract 
nutriment out of a sand heap. . . . 

The creditor is servant to his debtor, espe- 
cially if the latter is about paying any his due. 
I am amused to see what airs men take upon 
themselves when they have money to pay me, 
no matter how long they have deferred it. They 
imagine that they are my benefactors or patrons, 
and send me word graciously that, if I will come 
to their houses, they will pay me, when it is 
their business to come to me. 

Jan. 25, 1860. . . . When the river begins 
to break up, it becomes clouded like a mackerel 
sky, but in this case, the blue portions are where 
the current clearing away the ice beneath begins 
to show dark. The current of the water strik- 
ing the ice breaks it up at last into portions of 
the same form with those which the wind gives 
to vapor. 



WINTER. 253 

Jan. 26, 1840. Constantly, as it were, through. 
a remote skylight, I have glimpses of a serene 
friendship-land, and know the better why brooks 
murmur and violets grow. 

Jan. 26, 1841. I have as much property as 
I can command and use. If by a fault in my 
character I do not derive my just revenues, there 
is virtually a mortgage on my inheritance. A 
man's w r ealth is never entered in the regis- 
trar's office. Wealth does not come in along 
the great thoroughfares, it does not float on the 
Erie or Pennsylvania canal, but is imported by 
a solitary track without bustle or competition 
from a brave industry to a quiet mind. 

I had a dream last night which had reference 
to an act in my life, in which I had been most 
disinterested, and true to my highest instinct, 
but completely failed in realizing my hopes ; 
and now, after so many months, in the stillness 
of sleep, complete justice was rendered me. It 
was a divine remuneration. In my waking 
hours, I could not have conceived of such retri- 
bution ; the presumption of desert would have 
damned the whole. But now I was permitted 
to be not so much a subject as a partner to that 
retribution. It was the award of divine justice 
which will at length be, and is even now, accom- 
plished. 

Good writing as well as good acting will be 



254 WINTER. 

obedience to conscience. There must not be a 
particle of will or whim mixed with it. If we 
can listen we shall hear. By reverently listen- 
ing to the inner voice, we may reinstate our- 
selves on the pinnacle of humanity. 

Jan. 27, 1841. In the compensation of the 
dream, there was no implied loss to any, but 
immeasurable advantage to all. 

The punishment of sin is not positive as is 
the reward of virtue. 

For a flower, I like the name pansy or pensee 
best of any. 

Jan. 26, 1852. Whatever has been produced 
on the spur of the moment will bear to be re- 
considered and reformed with phlegm. The 
arrow had best not be loosely shot. The most 
transient and passing remark must be recon- 
sidered by the writer, made sure and warranted, 
as if the earth had rested on its axle to back it, 
and all the natural forces lay behind it. The 
writer must direct his sentence as carefully and 
leisurely as the marksman his rifle, who is sit- 
ting and with a rest, with patent sights and con- 
ical balls beside. He must not merely seem to 
speak the truth. He must really speak it. If 
you foresee that a part of your essay will topjjle 
down after the lapse of time, throw it down 
now yourself. 

A tree seen against other trees is a mere 



WINTER, 255 

dark mass, but against the sky it has parts, has 
symmetry and expansion. . . . The thousand 
fine points and tops of the trees delight me. 
They are the plumes and standards and bayonets 
of a host that march to victory over the earth. 
The trees are handsome toward the heavens, as 
well as up their boles. They are good for other 
things than boards and shingles. 

Obey the spur of the moment. These ac- 
cumulated it is that make the impulse and the 
impetus of the life of genius. These are the 
spongioles and rootlets by which its trunk is 
fed. If you neglect the moments, if you cut off 
your fibrous roots, what but a languishing life 
is to be expected. Let the spurs of countless 
moments goad us incessantly into life. I feel 
the spur of the moment thrust deep into my side. 
The present is an inexorable rider. The mo- 
ment always spurs either with a sharp or a blunt 
spur. Are my sides calloused ? Let us trust 
the rider that he knows the way, that he knows 
when speed and effort are required. What 
other impulse do we wait for ? 

Let us preserve religiously, secure, protect 
the coincidence of our life with the life of 
nature. Else what are heat and cold, day and 
night, sun, moon, and stars to us ? Was it not 
from sympathy with the present life of nature 
that we were born at this epoch rather than at 



256 WINTER. 

another ? . . . My life as essentially belongs to 
the present as that of a willow tree in the 
spring. Now, now, its catkins expand, its yel- 
low bark shines, its sap flows, now or never 
must you make whistles of it. Get the day to 
back you. Let it back you, and the night. 

The truest account of heaven is the fairest, 
and I will accept none which disappoints ex- 
pectation. It is more glorious to expect a better, 
than to enjoy a worse. 

When the thermometer is down to 20°, the 
streams of thought tinkle underneath like the 
rivers under the ice. Thought, like the ocean, 
is nearly of one temperature. . . . 

In winter we will think brave, hardy, and 
most native thoughts. Then the tender summer 
birds are flown. 

In few countries do they enjoy so fine a con- 
trast of summer and winter. We really have four 
seasons, each incredible to the other. Winter 
cannot be mistaken for summer here. Though 
I see the boat turned up on the shore, and 
half buried under snow, as I walk over the invis- 
ible river, summer is far away with its rustling 
reeds. It only suggests the want of thrift, the 
carelessness of its owner. 

Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy 
expresses a particle of it. 

Would you see your mind, look into the sky. 



WINTER. 257 

Would you know your own moods, be weather- 
wise. He whom the weather disappoints, dis- 
appoints himself. 

Let all things give way to the impulse of ex- 
pression. It is the bud unfolding, the perennial 
spring. As well stay the spring. Who shall 
resist the thaw ? . . . 

The word is well naturalized or rooted that 
can be traced back to a Celtic original. It is 
like getting out stumps and fat pine roots. . . . 

Nature never indulges in exclamations, never 
says ah ! or alas ! She is not French. She is 
a plain writer, uses few gestures, does not add 
to her verbs, uses few adverbs, no expletives. I 
find that I use many words for the sake of em- 
phasis, which really add nothing to the force of 
my sentences, and they look relieved the mo- 
ment I have canceled these, words which ex- 
press my mood, my conviction, rather than the 
simple truth. 

Youth supplies us with colors, age with can- 
vas. . . . Paint is costly. ... I think the heavens 
have had but one coat of paint since I was a 
boy, and their blue is paled and dingy and 
worn off in many places. I cannot afford to 
give them another coat. Where is the man so 
rich that he can give the earth a second coat of 
green in his manhood, or the heavens a second 
coat of blue. Our paints are all mixed when 



258 WINTER. 

we are young. . . . You would not suspect that 
some men's heavens had ever been azure or 
celestial, but that their painter had cheated 
them. . . . 

It is good to break and smell the black birch 
twigs now. — The lichens look rather bright to- 
day. . . . When they are bright and expanded, 
is it not a sign of a thaw or of rain ? The beauty 
of lichens with their scalloped leaves, the small at- 
tractive fields, the crinkled edge ! I could study 
a single piece of bark for hours. How they 
flourish ! I sympathize with their growth. . . . 

From these cliffs at this moment, the clouds 
in the west have a singular brassy color, and 
they are arranged in an unusual manner. A 
new disposition of the clouds will make the most 
familiar country appear foreign, like Tartary or 
Arabia Felix. . . . 

Jan. 26, 1853. Up river on ice, 9 A. M., 
above Pantry. A sharp cutting air. This is a 
pretty good winter morning, however. Not one 
of the rarer. There are from time to time 
mornings, both in summer and winter, when es- 
pecially the world seems to begin anew, beyond 
which memory need not go, for not behind them 
is yesterday and our past life, when as in the 
morning of a hoar frost there are visible the 
effects as of a certain creative energy. The 
world has visibly been recreated in the night. 



WINTER. 259 

Mornings of creation I call them. In the midst 
of these marks of a creative energy recently 
active, while the sun is rising with more than 
usual splendor, I look back for the era of this 
creation not into the night, but to a dawn for 
which no man ever rose early enough — a morn- 
ing which carries us back beyond the Mosaic 
creation, where crystallizations are fresh and 
unmelted. It is the poet's hour. Mornings 
when men are new born, men who have the 
seeds of life in them. It should be a part of 
my religion to be abroad then. This is not one 
of those mornings, but a clear, cold, airy winter 
day. 

It is surprising how much room there is in 
nature if a man will follow his proper path. In 
these broad fields, in these extensive woods, on 
this stretching river, I never meet a walker. 
Passing behind the farm-houses, I see no man 
out. Perhaps I do not meet so many men as I 
should have met three centuries ago when the 
Indian hunter roamed these woods. I enjoy the 
retirement and solitude of an early settler. Men 
have cleared some of the earth, which is no 
doubt an advantage to the walker. I see a man 
sometimes chopping in the woods, or planting or 
hoeing in a field at a distance, and yet there 
may be a lyceum meeting in the evening, and 
there is a book shop and library in the village, 



260 WINTER. 

and five times a day I can be whirled to Boston 
in an hour. . . . 

A slight fine snow has fallen in the night and 
drifted before the wind. I observe that it is so 
distributed over the ice as to show equal spaces 
of bare ice and of snow at pretty regular dis- 
tances. I have se£h the same phenomenon on 
the surface of snow in fields as if the little 
drifts disposed themselves according to the same 
law that makes waves of water. There is now 
a fine steam-like snow blowing over the ice, 
which continually lodges here and there, and 
forthwith a little drift accumulates. But why 
does it lodge at such regular intervals ? I see 
this fine drifting snow in the air, ten or twelve 
feet high at a distance. Perhaps it may have 
to do with the manner in, or the angle at, which 
the wind strikes the earth. 

Jan. 26, 1855. . . . P. m. A thick driving 
snow, something like, but less than, that of the 
19th. There is a strong easterly wind. ... I 
am afraid I have not described vividly enough 
the aspect of that lodging snow of the 19th and 
to-day partly. Imagine the innumerable twigs 
and boughs of the forest, as you stand in its 
midst, crossing each other at every conceivable 
angle on every side, from the ground to thirty 
feet in height, with each its zigzag wall of snow 
four or five inches high, so innumerable at dif- 



WINTER. 261 

ferent distances, one behind another, that they 
completely close up the view like a loose woven 
and downy screen into which, however, stooping 
and winding, you ceaselessly advance. The win- 
triest sceue, which perhaps can only be seen in 
perfection while the snow is yet falling before 
wind and thaw begin. Else you miss the deli- 
cate touch of the Master. A coarse woof and 
warp of snowy batting, leaving no space for a 
bird to perch. I see where a partridge has 
waddled through the snow still falling, mak- 
ing a continuous track. I look in the direc- 
tion to which it points, and see the bird just 
skimming over the bushes fifteen rods off. The 
plumes of pitch pines are first filled up solid, 
and then they begin to make great snowy casse- 
tetes or pestles. In the fields the air is thick 
with driving snow. You see only a dozen rods 
into its warp and woof. It fills either this ear 
or that and your eyes with hard, cutting, blind- 
ing scales, if you face it. It is forming shelly 
drifts behind the walls, and stretches in folds 
across the roads. But in deep, withdrawn hol- 
lows in the woods the flakes at last come gently 
and deviously down, lodging on every twig and 
leaf, forming deep, downy, level beds between, 
and on the ice of the pools. 

Jan. 26, 1856. ... As I was talking with 
Miss Mary Emerson this evening, she said, " It 



262 WINTER. 

was not the fashion to be so original when I was 
young." She is readier to take my view, to look 
through my eyes for the time being, than any 
young woman that I know in the town. 
v/ Jan. 26, 1858. . . . One may eat and drink 
and sleep and digest, and do the ordinary duties 
of a man, and have no excuse for sending for a 
doctor, and yet he may have reason to doubt if 
his life is as valuable and divine as that of an 
oyster. He may be the very best citizen in the 
town, and yet it shall occur to him to prick him- 
self with a pin to see if he is alive. It is won- 
derful how quiet, harmless, and ineffective a liv- 
ing creature may be. No more energy may it 
have than a fungus that lifts the bark of a 
decaying tree. I raised last summer a squash 
which weighed 123^ lbs. If it had fallen on me 
it would have made as deep and lasting an im- 
pression as most men do. I would just as lief 
know what it thinks about God as what most 
men think, or are said to think. In such a 
squash you have already got the bulk of a man. 
Many a man, perchance, when I have put such 
a question to him, opens his eyes for a moment, 
essays to think like a rusty firelock out of order, 
then calls for a plate of that same squash to eat, 
and goes to sleep, as it is called, and that is no 
great distance to go, surely. 

Some men have a peculiar taste for bad words, 



WINTER. 263 

mouthing and licking them into lumpish shapes, 
as the bear treats her cubs, words like tribal 
and ornamentation which drag a dead tail after 
them. They will pick you out of a thousand the 
still-born words, the falsettoes, the wing-clipt and 
lame words, as if only the false notes caught 
their ears. They cry encore to all the discords. 

The cocks crow in the yard, and the hens 
cackle and scratch all this winter. Eggs must 
be plenty. 

Jan. 1840. You might as well think to go 
in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it on the 
next hill as to embrace the complete idea of poetry 
even in thought. The best book is only an ad- 
vertisement of it, such as is sometimes sewed in 
with its cover. It has a logic more severe than 
the logician's. 

Jan. 27, 1840. What a tame life we are 
living ! How little heroic it is ! Let us devise 
never so perfect a system of living, and straight- 
way the soul leaves it to shuffle along its own 
way alone. It is easy enough to establish a dur- 
able and harmonious routine. Immediately all 
parts of nature consent to it. The sun-dial still 
points to the noon mark, and the sun rises and 
sets for it. The neighbors are never fatally ob- 
stinate when such a scheme is to be instituted, 
but forthwith all lend a hand, ring the bell, 
bring fuel and lights, put by work, and don their 



264 WINTER. 

best garments, with an earnest conformity which 
matches the operations of nature. There is al- 
ways a present and extant life which men com- 
bine to uphold, though its insufficiency is mani- 
fest enough. Still the sing-song goes on. Only 
make something take the place of something, 
and men will behave as if it were the thing they 
wanted. They must behave at any rate, and 
will work up any material. 

Jan. 27, 1852. The peculiarity of a work of 
genius is the absence of the speaker from his 
speech. He is but the medium. You behold a 
perfect work, but you do not behold the worker. 
I read its page, but it is as free from any man 
that can be remembered as an impassable desert. 
— I think that the one word which will explain 
the Shakespeare miracle is unconsciousness. If 
he had known his own comparative eminence, he 
would not have failed to publish it incessantly, 
though Bacon did not. There probably has been 
no more conscious age than the present. . . . 

I do not know but thoughts written down 
thus in a journal might be printed in the same 
form with greater advantage than if the related 
ones were brought together into separate essays. 
They are now allied to life, and are seen by the 
reader not to be far-fetched. It is . . . less 
artificial. I feel that in the other case I should 
have no proper frame for my sketches. Mere 



WINTER. 265 

facts and names and dates communicate more 
than we suspect. Whether the flower looks 
better in the nosegay than in the meadow where 
it grew, and we had to wet our feet to get it ! Is 
the scholastic air any advantage ? 

Jan. 28, 1852. Perhaps I can never find so 
good a setting for my thoughts as I shall thus 
have taken them out of. The crystal never 
sparkles more brightly than in the cavern. The 
world has always loved best the fable with the 
moral. The children could read the fable alone 
— the grown up read both. The truth so told 
has the best advantage of the most abstract state- 
ment, for it is not the less universally applicable. 
Where else will you ever find the cement for 
your thoughts ? How will you ever rivet them 
together without leaving the marks of the file ? 
Yet Plutarch did not so. Montaigne did not so. 
Men have written travels in this form, but per- 
haps no man's daily life has been rich enough 
to be journalized. Our life should be so active 
and progressive as to be a journey. Our meals 
should all be of journey cake and hasty pudding. 
TVe should be more alert, see the sun rise, not 
keep fashionable hours, enter a house, our own 
house as a khan or caravansary. At noon I did 
not dine, I ate my journey cake, I quenched my 
thirst at a spring or a brook. As I sat at the 
table, the hospitality was so perfect and the re- 



266 WINTER. 

past so sumptuous that I seemed to be breaking 
my fast upon a bank in the midst of an arduous 
journey, that the water seemed to be a living 
spring, the napkins grass, the conversation free 
as the winds, and the servants that waited on us 
were our simple desires. Cut off from Pilpay 
and iEsop the moral alone at the bottom, would 
that content you ? 

Jan. 27, 1853. Trench says a wild man is a 
willed man ; well, then, a man of will who does 
what he wills or wishes, a man of hope and of 
the future tense, for not only the obstinate is 
willed, but, far more, the constant and persever- 
ing. The obstinate man, properly speaking, is 
one who wills not. The perseverance of the 
saints is positive willedness, not a mere passive 
willingness. The fates are wild, for they will, 
and the Almighty is wild above all, as fate is. 

What are our fields but felds or felled woods. 
They bear a more recent name than the woods, 
suggesting that previously the earth was covered 
with woods. Always in a new country a field is 
a clearing. 

Jan. 27, 1854. I have an old account book 
found in Dea. E. Brown's garret since his death. 
The first leaf or two is gone. Its cover is 
brown paper, on which, amid many marks and 
scribblings, I find written : — 



WINTER. 267 

"Mr. Ephraim Jones 
His Wast Book 
Anno Domini 
1742." 

It extends from November 8, 1742, to June 20, 
1743, inclusive. It appears without doubt from 
the contents of this book that [this Jones] is the 
one of whom Shattuck writes in his history that 
he "married Mary Hayward, 1728, and died 
Nov. 29, 1756, aged 51, having been captain, 
town -clerk, and otherwise distinguished." His 
father's name was Ephraim, and he had a son 
Ephraim. . . . The book is filled with familiar 
Concord names, the grandfathers and great- 
grandfathers of the present generation. Dr. 
Hartshorn, who lived to be ninety-two, and Dr. 
Temple send to the store once or twice. It is 
more important now what was bought than who 
bought it. The articles most commonly bought 
are mohair (a kind of twist to sew on buttons 
with), usually with buttons, rum, often only a 
gill to drink at the store (more of these than 
anything else), salt, molasses, shalloon, fish, 
calico, some sugar, a castor hat, almanac, psal- 
ter, and sometimes primer and testament, paper, 
knee - buckles and shoe - buckles, garters and 
spurs, . . . deer skins, a fan, a cart - whip, 
various kinds of cloth and trimmings, . . . 
gloves, a spring knife, an ink-horn, a gun cap, 



268 WINTER. 

spice, . . . timber, iron, earthenware, etc., no 
tea (I am in doubt about one or two entries), 
nor coffee, nor meal, nor flour. Of the last two 
they probably raised all they wanted. Credit is 
frequently given for timber, and once for cloth 
brought to the store. 

On the whole, it is remarkable how little pro- 
vision was sold at the store. The inhabitants 
raised almost everything for themselves. Choc- 
olate is sold once. Rum, salt, molasses, fish, a 
biscuit with their drink, a little spice and the 
like, are all that commonly come under this head 
that I remember. On a loose piece of paper 
. . . is Jonathan D wight's (innholder's (?)) 
bill against the estate of Captain Ephraim Jones 
for entertainment, etc. (apparently he treated his 
company), at divers times for half a dozen years, 
amounting to over £146. — The people appar- 
ently made their own cloth and even thread, and 
hence for the most part bought only buttons and 
mohair and a few trimmings. . . . 

Jan. 18th '42 (3) "John Melvin C r . by 1 
Grey fox 0-2-3." 

Feb. 14 '42 (3) "Aaron Parker C r . by 
100 squirell skins 0-6-3." Deer skins were 
sold at from ten to seventeen shillings. Some- 
times it is written " old " or " new tenor." 
Many of the customers came from as far as Har- 
vard or much farther. . . . 



WINTER. 269 

No butter, nor rice, nor oil, nor candles are 
sold. They must have used candles, made their 
own butter, and done without rice. There is no 
more authentic history of those days than this 
" Wast Book" contains, and relating to money 
matters, it is more explicit than almost any 
other statement. Something must be said. 
Each line contains and states explicitly a fact. 
It is the best of evidence of several facts. It 
tells distinctly and authoritatively who sold, who 
bought, the article, amount, and value, and the 
date. You could not easily crowd more facts 
into one line. You are informed when the doc- 
tor or deacon had a new suit of clothes by the 
charge for mohair, buttons and trimmings, or a 
castor hat, and here also is entered the rum 
which ran down their very throats. . . . 

We begin to die not in our senses and extrem- 
ities, but in our divine faculties. Our members 
may be sound, our sight and hearing perfect, 
but our genius and imagination betray signs of 
decay. You tell me that you are growing old, 
and are troubled to see without glasses, but this 
is unimportant if the divine faculty of the seer 
shows no signs of decay. 

Jan. 27, 1857. . . . The most poetic and 
truest account of objects is generally given by 
those who first observe them, or the discoverers 
of them, whether a sharper perception and 



270 WINTER. 

curiosity in them led to the discovery or the 
greater novelty more inspired their report. Ac- 
cordingly, I love most to read the accounts of a 
country, its natural productions and curiosities, 
by those who first settled it, and also the earliest, 
though often unscientific writers on natural sci- 
ence. 

Jan. 27, 1858. p. m. To Hill and beyond. 
It is so mild and moist as I saunter along by 
the wall and east of the hill that I remember or 
anticipate one of those warm rain storms in the 
spring when the earth is just laid bare, the wind 
is south, and the Cladonia lichens are swollen 
and lusty with moisture, your foot sinking into 
them, and pressing the water out as from a 
sponge, and the sandy places also are drinking 
it in. You wander indefinitely in a beaded coat, 
wet to the skin of your legs, sit on moss-clad 
rocks and stumps, and hear the lisping of mi- 
grating sparrows flitting amid the shrub oaks, sit 
long at a time, still, and have your thoughts. A 
rain which is as serene as fair weather, suggest- 
ing fairer weather than was ever seen. You 
could hug the clods that defile you. You feel 
the fertilizing influence of the rain in your 
mind. The part of you that is wettest is fullest 
of life, like the lichens. You discover evidences 
of immortality not known to divines. You 
cease to die. You detect some buds and sprouts 



WINTER. 271 

of life. Every step in the old rye field is on J 
virgin soil. — And then the rain comes thicker I 
and faster than before, thawing the remaining / 
part of the ground, detaining the migrating / 
bird, and you turn your back to it, full of se- 
rene, contented thoughts, soothed by the steady \ 
dropping on the withered leaves, more at home j 
for being abroad, sinking at each step deep into 
the thawing earth, gladly breaking through the 
gray rotting ice. The dullest sounds seem 
sweetly modulated by the air. You leave your 
tracks in fields of spring rye, scaring the fox- 
colored sparrows along the woodsides, . . . full 
of joy and expectation, seeing nothing but 
beauty, hearing nothing but music, as free as 
the fox-colored sparrow, . . . not indebted to 
any academy or college for this expansion, but 
chiefly to the April sun which shineth on all 
alike, not encouraged by men in your walks, not 
by the divines or the professors, and to the law- 
giver an outlaw. . . . Steadily the eternal rain j 
falls, drip, drip, drip, the mist drives and clears ( 
your sight, the wind blows and warms your sit- I 
ting on that sandy upland that April day. 

Jan. 27, 1859. I see some of those little 
cells, perhaps of a wasp or bee, made of clay or 
clayey mud. It suggests that those insects were 
the first potters. They look somewhat like 
small stone jugs. 



272 WINTER. 

Jan. 27, 1860. . . . When you think your 
walk is profitless and a failure, and you can 
hardly persuade yourself not to return, it is on 
the point of being a success, for then you are 
in that subdued and knocking mood to which 
nature never fails to open. 

Jan. 28, 1841. No innocence can quite stand 
up under suspicion, if it is conscious of being 
suspected. In the company of one who puts a 
mean construction upon your actions, they are 
apt really to deserve such a construction. While 
in that society I can never retrieve myself. At- 
tribute to me a great motive and I shall not fail 
to have one, but a mean one, and the fountain of 
virtue will be poisoned by the suspicion. Show 
men unlimited faith as the coin with which you 
will deal with them, and they will invariably 
exhibit the best wares they have. I would 
meet men as the friend of all their virtue, and 
the foe of all their vice, for no man is the part- 
ner of his guilt. 

If you suspect me, you will never see me, but 
all our intercourse will be the politest leave-tak- 
ing. I shall constantly defer and apologize, and 
postpone myself in your presence. The self- 
defender is accursed in the sight of gods and 
men ; he is a superfluous knight who serves no 
lady in the land. He will find in the end that 
he has been fighting windmills, and has battered 



WINTER. 273 

his mace to no purpose. The injured man 
resisting his fate is like a tree struck by light- 
ning which rustles its sere leaves the winter 
through, not having vigor enough to cast them 
off. . . . 

Eesistance is a very wholesome and delicious 
morsel at times. When Venus advanced against 
the Greeks with resistless valor, it was by far 
the most natural attitude into which the poet 
could throw his hero, to make him resist hero- 
ically. To a devil one might yield gracefully, 
but a god would be a worthy foe, and would par- 
don the affront. . . . 

Let your mood determine the form of saluta- 
tion, and approach the creature with a natural 
nonchalance, as though he were anything but 
what he is, and you were anything but what you 
are, — as though he were he, and you were you 
— in short, as though he were so insignificant 
that it did not signify — and so important that 
it did not import. 

Jan. 28, 1852. . . . They showed me Johnny 
Eiorden to-day, with one thickness of ragged 
cloth over his little shirt for all this cold weather, 
with shoes having large holes in the toes into 
which the snow got, as he said, without an outer 
garment, walking a mile to school every day 
over the bleakest of causeways where I know, 
by my own experience, a grown man could not 



274 WINTER. 

walk at times without freezing his ears, if they 
were exposed, but infant blood circulates faster. 
The clothes with countless patches which claimed 
descent from pantaloons of mine set as if his 
mother had fitted them to a tea-kettle first. 
This little specimen of humanity, this tender 
gobbet of the fates cast into a cold world with 
a torn lichen leaf wrapped about him ; is man 
so cheap that he cannot be clothed but with a 
mat or rag? that we should bestow on him our 
cold victuals ? . . . Let the mature rich wear 
the rags and insufficient clothing, let the infant 
poor wear the purple and fine linen. I shudder 
when I think of the fate of innocency. ... A 
charity which dispenses the crumbs which fall 
from its overloaded tables, which are left after 
its feasts, whose waste and whose example pro- 
duced that poverty ! 

3 P. M. Went round by Tuttle's road and 
so out on to the "Walden road. These warmer 
days the wood -chopper finds that the wood 
cuts easier than when it had the frost in its sap- 
wood, though it does not split so readily. Thus 
every change in the weather has its influence on 
him, and is appreciated by him in a peculiar 
way. The wood-cutter and his practices and ex- 
periences are more to be attended to. His ac- 
cidents, perhaps more than any others, should 
mark the epochs in the winter day. Now that 



WINTER. 275 

the Indian is gone, lie stands nearest to nature. 
Who has written the history of his day? How 
far still is the writer of books from the man, 
his old playmate it may be, who chops in the 
woods ? There are ages between them. Homer 
refers to the progress of the woodcutter's work 
to mark the time of day on the plains of Troy, 
and the inference commonly is that he lived in a 
more primitive state of society than the present. 
But I think this is a mistake. Like proves like 
in all ages, and the fact that I myself should 
take pleasure in referring to just such simple 
and peaceful labors which are always proceed- 
ing, that the contrast itself always attracts the 
civilized poet to what is rudest and most primi- 
tive in his contemporaries, all this rather proves 
a certain interval between the poet and the chop- 
per whose labor he refers to, than an unusual 
nearness to him, on the principle that familiar- 
ity breeds contempt. Homer is to be subjected 
to a very different kind of criticism from any 
he has received. That reader who most fully 
appreciates the poet, and derives the greatest 
pleasure from his work, himself lives in circum- 
stances most like those of the poet himself. 

About Brister's spring the ferns which have 
been covered with snow are still quite green. 
The skunk - cabbage in the water is already 
pushed up, and I find the pinkish head of flowers 
within its spathe is bigger than a pea. 



276 WINTER. 

Jan. 28, 1853. Saw three ducks sailing in 
the river . . . this afternoon, black with white 
on wings, though these two or three have been 
the coldest days of the winter, and the river is 
generally closed. 

Jan. 28, 1857. Am again surprised to see a 
song sparrow sitting for hours on our wood-pile 
... in the midst of snow in the yard. It is un- 
willing to move. People go to the pump, and 
the cat and dog walk round the wood-pile with- 
out starting it. I examine it at my leisure 
through a glass. Remarkable that this coldest 
of all winters this bird should remain. Perhaps 
it is no more comfortable this season farther 
south where they are accustomed to abide. In 
the afternoon this sparrow joined a flock of tree 
sparrows on the bare ground west of the house. 
It was amusing to see the tree sparrows wash 
themselves, standing in the puddles and tossing 
the water over themselves. They have had no 
opportunity to wash for a month perhaps, there 
having been no thaw. The song sparrow did 
not go off with them. 

Jan. 28, 1858. Minott has a sharp ear for 
the note of any migratory bird. Though confined 
to his dooryard by rheumatism, he commonly 
hears them sooner than the widest rambler. 
May be he listens all day for them, or they come 
and sing over his house, report themselves to 



WINTER. 211 

him, and receive their season ticket. He is never 
at fault. If he says he heard such a bird, 
though- sitting by his chimney side, you may de- 
pend on it. He can swear through glass. He 
has not spoiled his ears by attending lectures and 
caucuses. The other day the rumor went that a 
flock of geese had been seen flying over Con- 
cord, mid-winter as it was by the almanac. I 
traced it to Minott, aDd yet I was compelled to 
doubt. I had it directly that he had heard them 
within a week. I made haste to him, his repu- 
tation was at stake. He said that he stood in 
his shed one of the late muggy, April-like morn- 
ings, when he heard one short, but distinct honk 
of a goose. He went into the house, took his 
cane, exerted himself, or that sound imparted 
strength to him, lame as he was, went up on to 
the hill, a thing he had not done for a year, that 
he might hear all around. He saw nothing, but 
heard the note again. It came from over the 
brook. It was a wild goose. He was sure of it. 
He thought that the back of the winter was 
broken, if it had any this year, but he feared 
such a winter would kill him too. Hence the 
rumor spread and grew. I was silent, pondered, 
and abandoned myself to unseen guides. I 
drew into my mind all its members like the tor- 
toise. Suddenly the truth flashed on me, and I 
remembered that within a week I had heard of 



278 WINTER. 

a box at the tavern which had come by railroad 
express containing three wild geese, and directed 
to his neighbor over the brook. The April-like 
morning had excited one so that he honked, and 
Minott's reputation acquired new lustre. . . . 

As I come through the village at 11 p. M., the 
sky is completely overcast, and the perhaps thin 
clouds are very distinctly pink or reddish, some- 
what as if reflecting a distant fire, but this phe- 
nomenon is universal, all round and overhead. 
I suspect there is a red aurora borealis behind. 

Jan. 29, 1840. A friend in history looks like 
some premature soul. The nearest approach to 
a community of love in these days is like the 
distant breaking of waves on the sea-shore. An 
ocean there must be, for it washes our beach. 
This alone do all men sail for, trade for, plow 
for, preach for, fight for. 

The Greeks, like those of the south generally, 
expressed themselves with more facility than we, 
in distinct and lively images, and so far as re- 
lates to the grace and completeness with which 
they treated the subjects suited to their genius, 
they must be allowed to retain their ancient su- 
premacy. But a rugged and uncouth array of 
thought, though never so modern, may rout them 
at any moment. It remains for other than 
Greeks to write the literature of the next cen- 
tury. 



WINTER. 279 

iEschylus had a clear eye for the commonest 
things. His genius was only an enlarged com- 
mon sense. He adverts with chaste severity to 
all natural facts. His sublimity is Greek sin- 
cerity and simpler] ess, naked wonder at what 
mythology had not helped to explain. He is 
competent to express any of the common manly 
feelings. If his hero is to make a boast, it does 
not lack fullness, it is as boastful as could be 
desired. He has a flexible mouth and can fill 
it readily with strong, sound words, so that you 
will say the man's speech wants nothing. He 
has left nothing unsaid, but has actually wiped 
his lips of it. Whatever the common eye sees 
at all and expresses as best it may, he sees un- 
commonly, and expresses with rare complete- 
ness. The multitude that thronged the theatre 
could no doubt go along with him to the end. — 
The Greeks had no transcendent geniuses like 
Milton and Shakespeare, whose merit only pos- 
terity could fully appreciate. 

The social condition is the same in all ages. 
iEschylus was undoubtedly alone and without 
sympathy in his simple reverence for the mystery 
of the universe. 

Jan. 29, 1841.' There is something proudly 
thrilling in the thought that this obedience to 
conscience and trust in God, which is so sol- 
emnly preached in extremities and arduous cir- 



280 WINTER. 

cumstances, is only a retreat to one's self and 
reliance on one's own strength. In trivial cir- 
cumstances I find myself sufficient to myself, 
and in the most momentous, I have no ally but 
myself, and must silently put by their harm 
by my own strength, as I did with the former. 
As my own hand bent aside the willow in my 
path, so must my single arm put to flight the 
devil and his angels. God is not our ally when 
we shrink, and neuter when we are bold. . . . 
When you trust, do not lay aside your armor, but 
put it on and buckle it tighter. If by reliance 
on the gods I have disbanded one of my forces, 
then was it poor policy. . . . There is more of 
God and divine help in a man's little finger 
than in idle prayer and trust. 

The best and bravest deed is that which the 
whole man, heart, lungs, hands, fingers, and toes 
at any time prompt. Each hanger-on in the 
purlieus of the camp . . . must fall into the line 
of march. If a single sutler delay to make up 
his pack, then suspect the fates and consult the 
oracles again. This is the meaning of integrity ; 
this it is to be an integer, and not a fraction. 
Be even for all virtuous ends, but odd for all 
vice. . . . 

Friends will have to be introduced each time 
they meet. They will be eternally strange to 
one another, and when they have mutually ap- 



WINTER. 281 

propriated the last hour, they will go and gather 
a new measure of strangeness for the next. They 
are like two boughs crossed in the wood, which 
play backwards and forwards upon one another 
in the wind, and only wear into each other, but 
never does the sap of the one flow into the pores 
of the other, for then the wind would no more 
draw from them those strains which enchanted 
the wood. They are not two united, but rather 
one divided. 

Of all strange and unaccountable things this 
journalizing is the strangest. It will allow noth- 
ing to be predicated of it. Its good is not good, 
nor its bad, bad. If I make a huge effort to 
expose my innermost and richest wares to light, 
my counter seems cluttered with the meanest 
home-made stuff, but after months or years, I 
may discover the wealth of India, and whatever 
rarity is brought overland from Cathay, in that 
confused heap, and what seemed perhaps a fes- 
toon of dried apple or pumpkin will prove a 
string of Brazilian diamonds, or pearls from Co- 
romandel. 

Men lie behind the barrier of a relation as 
effectually concealed as the landscape by a mist ; 
and when at length some unforeseen accident 
throws me into a new attitude toward them, I 
am astounded as if for the first time I saw the 
sun on the hillside. They lie out before me like 



r 



282 WINTER. 

a new order of things, as when the master meets 
his pupil as a man. Then first do we stand un- 
der the same heavens, and master and pupil alike 
go down the resistless ocean stream together. 

Jan. 29, 1852. We must be very active, if 
we would be clean, live our own life and not a 
languishing and scurvy one. The trees which 
are stationary are covered with parasites, espe- 
cially those which have grown slowly. The air 
is filled with the fine sporules of countless 
mosses, algae, lichens, fungi, which settle and 
plant themselves on all quiet surfaces. Under 
the nails and between the joints of the fingers 
of the idle flourish crops of mildew, algae, 
fungi, and other vegetable sloths, though they 
may be invisible, the lichens where life still 
exists, the fungi where decomposition has begun 
to take place, and the sluggard is soon covered 
with sphagnum. Algse take root in the corners 
of his eyes, and lichens cover the bulbs of his 
fingers and his head. . . . This is the definition 
of dirt. We fall a prey to others of nature's 
tenants who take possession of the unoccupied 
house. With the utmost inward alacrity we 
have to wash and comb ourselves ... to get rid 
of the adhering seeds. Cleanliness is by activ- 
ity not to give any quiet shelf for the seeds of 
parasitic plants to take root on. . . . 

The forcible writer does not go far for his 



WINTER. 283 

themes. His ideas are not far-fetched. He de- 
rives inspiration from his chagrins and his satis- 
factions. His theme being ever an instant one, 
his own gravity assists him, gives impetus to 
what he says. He does not speculate while 
others drudge for him. 

I am often reminded that if I had bestowed 
on me the wealth of Croesus, my aims must 
still be the same, and my means essentially the 
same. . . . 

Few are the days when the telegraph harp 
rises into a pure, clear melody. The wind may 
blow strong or soft in this or that direction, 
naught will you hear but a low hum or murmur, 
or even a buzzing sound, but at length when some 
undistinguishable zephyr blows, when the con- 
ditions, not easy to be detected, arrive, it sud- 
denly and unexpectedly rises into melody, as if a 
god had touched it, and fortunate is the walker 
who chances to be within hearing. So is it with 
the lyres of bards. For the most part it is 
only a feeble and ineffectual hum that comes 
from them, which leads you to expect the mel- 
ody you do not hear. When the gale is modi- 
fied, when the favorable conditions occur and 
the indescribable coincidence takes place, then 
there is music. Of a thousand buzzing strings, 
only one yields music. It is like the hum of 
the shaft or other machinery of a steamboat, 



284 WINTER. 

which at length might become music in a divine 
hand. . . . 

Heard C. lecture to-night. It was a bushel 
of nuts, perhaps the most original lecture I 'ever 
heard ; ever so unexpected, not to be foretold, 
and so sententious that you could not look at 
him, and take his thought at the same time. 
You had to give your undivided attention to the 
thoughts, for you were not assisted by set 
phrases or modes of speech intervening. There 
was no sloping up or down to or from his points. 
It was all genius, no talent. It required more 
close attention, more abstraction from surround- 
ing circumstances than any lecture I have heard, 
for well as I know C, he more than any man 
disappoints my expectation. When I meet him 
in the dark, hear him, I cannot realize that I 
ever saw him before. He will be strange, un- 
expected to his best acquaintance. I cannot as- 
sociate the lecturer with the companion of my 
walks. The lecture was from so original and 
peculiar a point of view, yet just to himself in 
the main, that I doubt if three in the audience 
apprehended a tithe of what he said. It was so 
hard to hear that doubtless few made the exer- 
tion, a thick succession of mountain passes, and 
no intermediate slopes and plains. Other lec- 
tures, even the best, in which so much space is 
given to the elaborate development of a few 



WINTER. 285 

ideas, seemed somewhat meagre in comparison. 
Yet it would be how much more glorious if tal- 
ent were added to genius, if there were a just 
arrangement and development of the thoughts, 
if each step were not a leap, but he ran a space 
to take a yet higher leap. Most of the specta- 
tors sat in front of the performer, but here was 
one who, by accident, sat all the while on one 
side, and his report was peculiar and startling. 

Jan. 30, 1852. Channing's lecture was full 
of wise, acute, and witty observations, yet most 
of the audience did not know but it was mere 
incoherent and reckless verbiage and nonsense. 
I lose my respect for people who do not know 
what is good and true. I know full well that 
readers and hearers, with the fewest exceptions, 
ask me for my second best. 

Jan. 29, 1854. A very cold morning. Mer- 
cury 18° below zero. — Varro says arista, the 
beard of grain, is so called because it dries first 
(quod arescit prima), the grain, granum, is a 
gerendo, for the object of planting is that this 
may be borne. "But the spica or ear which 
the rustics call speca, as they have received it 
from their forefathers, seems to be named from 
spe (hope), earn enim quod sperant fore, be- 
cause they hope that this will be hereafter." 

Jan. 29, 1856. ... It is observable that not 
only the moose and the wolf disappear before 



286 WINTER. 

the civilized man, but even many species of in- 
sects, such as the black fly and the almost mi- 
croscopic " No-see-em." How imperfect a no- 
tion have we commonly of what was the actual 
condition of the place where we dwell, three 
centuries ago. 

Jan. 29, 1858. p. m. To Great Meadows at 
Copan. . . . Found some splendid fungi on old 
aspens used for a fence ; quite firm, reddish 
white above, and bright vermilion beneath, or 
perhaps more scarlet, reflecting various shades 
as it is turned. It is remarkable that the upper 
side of the fungus, which must, as here, com- 
monly be low on decaying wood, so that we look 
down on it, is not bright colored nor handsome, 
and it was only when I had broken it off and 
turned it over that I was surprised by its 
brilliant color. This intense vermilion (?) face, 
which would be known to every boy in the town 
if it were turned upward, faces the earth, and 
is discerned only by the curious naturalist. Its 
ear is turned down listening to the honest 
praises of the earth. It is like a light red vel- 
vet or damask. These silent and motionless 
fungi with their ears turned ever downward to 
the earth, revealing their bright color perchance 
only to the prying naturalist who turns them 
upward, remind me of the " Hear-all " of the 
story. 



WINTER. 287 

Jan. 29, 1860. . . . As usual, I now see, as 
I walk on the river and river meadow ice, thinly 
covered with the fresh snow, that conical rain- 
bow, or parabola of rainbow-colored reflections 
from the myriad reflecting crystals of the snow, 
i. e., as I walk toward the sun, always a little 
in advance of me, of course, the angle of re- 
flection being equal to that of incidence. 

Jan. 30, 1841. . . . The fashions of the wood 
are more fluctuating than those of Paris. Snow, 
rime, ice, green and dry leaves incessantly make 
new patterns. There are all the shapes and 
hues of the kaleidoscope, and the designs and 
ciphers of books of heraldry, in the outlines of 
the trees. Every time I see a nodding pine top, 
it seems as if a new fashion of wearing plumes 
had come into vogue. . . . 

You glance up these paths, closely embraced 
by bent trees, as through the side aisles of a 
cathedra], and expect to hear a choir chanting 
from their depths. You are never so far in 
them as they are far before you. Their secret 
is where you are not, and where your feet can 
never carry you. . . . 

Here is the distinct trail of a fox stretching 
a quarter of a mile across the pond. ... I am 
curious to know what has determined its grace- 
ful curvatures, its greater or less spaces and dis- 
tinctness, and how surely they were coincident 



288 WINTER. 

with the fluctuations of some mind, why they 
now lead me two steps to the right, and then 
three to the left. If these things are not to be 
called up and accounted for in the Lamb's Book 
of Life, I shall set them down for careless ac- 
countants. Here was the expression of the 
divine mind this morning. The pond was his 
journal, and last night's snow made a tabula 
rasa for him. I know which way a mind wended 
this morning, what horizon it faced, by the set- 
ting of these tracks, whether it moved slowly or 
rapidly, by the greater or less intervals and dis- , 
tinctness, for the swiftest step leaves yet a last- 
ing trace. . . . Fair Haven pond is scored with 
the trails of foxes, and you may see where they 
have gamboled and gone through a hundred 
evolutions, which testify to a singular listless- 
ness and leisure in nature. 

Suddenly looking down the river, I saw a fox 
some sixty rods off making across the hills on 
my left. As the snow lay five inches deep, he 
made but slow progress, but it was no impedi- 
ment to me. So yielding to the instinct of the 
chase, I tossed my head aloft, and bounded 
away, snuffing the air like a fox-hound, and 
spurning the world and human society at each 
bound. It seemed the woods rang with the hun- 
ter's horn, and Diana and all the satyrs joined 
in the chase and cheered me on. Olympian and 



WINTER. 289 

Elean youths were waving palms on the hills. In 
the meanwhile, I gained rapidly on the fox, but 
he showed a remarkable presence of mind, for in- 
stead of keeping up the face of the hill, which was 
steep and unwooded in that part, he kept along 
the slope in the direction of the forest, though 
he lost ground by it. Notwithstanding his 
fright, he took no step which was not beautiful. 
The course on his part was a series of most 
graceful curves. It was a sort of leopard can- 
ter, I should say, as if he were nowise impeded 
by the snow, but were husbanding his strength 
all the while. When he doubled, I wheeled and 
cut him off, bounding with fresh vigor, Antaeus- 
like recovering my strength each time I touched 
the snow. Having got near enough for a fair 
view, just as he was slipping into the wood, I 
gracefully yielded him the palm. He ran as if 
there were not a bone in his back, occasionally 
dropping his muzzle to the snow for a rod or two, 
and then tossing his head aloft, when satisfied of 
his course. When he came to a declivity, he 
put his fore feet together, and slid down it like 
a cat. He trod so softly that you could not 
have heard from any nearness, and yet with 
such expression that it would not have been 
quite inaudible from any distance. So hoping 
this experience would prove a useful lesson to 
him, I returned to the village by the highway 
of the river. 



290 WINTER. 

Jan. 30, 1852. I feel as if I were gradually- 
parting company with certain friends, just as 
I perceive familiar objects successively disap- 
pear when I am leaving my native town in the 
cars. . . . 

After all, where is the flower lore? for the 
first book, not the last, should contain the poetry 
of flowers. The natural system may tell us the 
value of a plant in medicine or the arts, or for 
food, but neither it nor the Linnsean, to any 
great extent, tells us its chief value and signifi- 
cance to man, what in any measure accounts for 
its beauty, its flower-like properties. There will 
be pages about some fair flower's qualities as 
food or medicine, but perhaps not a sentence 
about its significance to the eye (as if the cow- 
slip were better for greens than for yellows), 
about what children and all flower-lovers gather 
flowers for. [The book I refer to should be] 
not addressed to the cook, or the physician, or 
the dyer merely, but to the lovers of flowers 
young and old, the most poetical of books in 
which is breathed man's love of flowers. 

Do nothing merely out of good resolutions. 
Discipline yourself only to yield to love. Suffer 
yourself to be attracted. It is in vain to write 
on chosen themes. We must wait till they have 
kindled a flame in our minds. There must be 
the . . . generating force of love behind every 



WINTER. 291 

effort destined to be successful. The cold re- 
solve gives birth to, begets nothing. The theme 
that seeks me, not I, it. The poet's relation to 
his theme is the relation of lovers. It is no 
more to be courted. Obey, report. 

Though they are cutting off the wood at Wal- 
den, it is not all loss. It makes some new and 
unexpected prospects. ... As I stood on the 
partially cleared bank at the E. end of the 
pond, I looked S. over the side of the hill 
into a deep dell, still wooded, and saw not more 
than thirty rods off a chopper at his work. I was 
half a dozen rods distant from the standing 
wood, and I saw him through a vista between 
two trees. He appeared to me charmingly dis- 
tinct as in a picture, of which the two trees were 
the frame. He was seen against the snow on 
the hillside beyond. I could distinguish each 
part of his dress perfectly, and the axe with dis- 
tinct outline, as he raised it above his head, the 
black iron against the snow. I could hear every 
stroke distinctly. Yet I should have deemed it 
ridiculous to call to him, he appeared so distant. 
He appeared with the same distinctness as ob- 
jects seen through a pin hole in a card. This 
was the effect rather than what would have been 
by comparison of him, his size with the nearer 
trees between which I saw him, and which made 
the canopied roof of the grove far above his 



292 WINTER. 

head. It was, perhaps, one of those coincidences 
and effects which have made men painters. I 
could not behold him as an actual man. He 
was more ideal than in any picture I have seen. 
He refused to be seen as actual ; far in the hol- 
low, yet somewhat enlightened aisles of this 
wooded dell. Some scenes will thus present 
themselves as picture, . . . subjects for the pen- 
cil, . . . distinctly marked. They do not re- 
quire the aid of genius to idealize them. They 
must be seen as ideal. . . . 

I am afraid to travel much, or to famous 
places, lest it might completely dissipate the 
mind. Then I am sure that what we observe 
at home, if we observe anything, is of more im- 
portance than what we observe abroad. The 
far-fetched is of the least value. What we ob- 
serve in traveling are, to some extent, the acci- 
dents of the body ; what we observe when sitting 
at home are, in the same proportion, phenomena 
of the mind itself. A wakeful night will yield 
as much thought as a long journey. If we try 
thoughts by their quality, not their quantity, I 
may find that a restless night will yield more 
than the longest journey. . . . 

It is remarkable that there is no man so 
coarse and insensible but he can be profane, can 
pronounce the word " God " with emphasis in 
the woods when anything happens to disturb 



WINTER. 293 

him, as a spoiled child loves to see what liberties 
he can presume to take. I am only astonished 

that B should think it any daring, that he 

should believe in God so much, look round to 
see if his auditors appreciated his boldness. 

Jan. 30, 1854. Another cold morning. 13° 
below zero. . . . This morning, though not so 
cold by a degree or two as yesterday morning, 
the cold has got more into the house. . . . The 
sheets are frozen about the sleeper's face. The 
teamster's beard is white with ice. Last night 
I felt it stinging cold as I came up the street at 
nine o'clock. It bit my ears and face, but the 
stars shone all the brighter. The windows are all 
closed up with frost, as if they were of ground 
glass. . . . The snow is dry and squeaks under 
the feet, and the teams creak, as if they needed 
greasing, sounds associated with extremely cold 
weather. 

p. m. Up river on ice and snow to Fair Ha- 
ven Pond. . . . We look at every track in the 
snow. Every little while there is the track of a 
fox, may be the same one, across the river, turn- 
ing aside sometimes to a muskrat's cabin or a 
point of ice where he has left some traces, and 
frequently the larger track of a hound which has 
followed his trail. . . . This road is so wide 
that you do not feel confined in it, and you never 
meet travelers with whom you have no sym- 



294 WINTER. 

pathy. The winter, cold and bound out, as it is, 
is thrown to us like a bone to a famishing dog, 
and we are expected to get the marrow out of it. 
While the milkmen in the outskirts are milking 
so many scores of cows before sunrise these win- 
ter mornings, it is our task to milk the winter 
itself. It is true it is like a cow that is dry, and 
our fingers are numb, and there is none to wake 
us up. Some desert the fields, and go into win- 
ter quarters in the city. They attend the ora- 
torios, while the only music we countrymen hear 
is the squeaking of the snow under our boots. 
But the winter was not given us for no purpose. 
We must thaw its cold with our genialness. 
We are tasked to find out and appropriate all 
the nutriment it yields. If it is a cold and hard 
season, its fruit no doubt is the more concen- 
trated and nutty. It took the cold and bleak- 
ness of November to ripen the walnut, but the 
human brain is the kernel which the winter it- 
self matures. Not till then does its shell come 
off. . . . Because the fruits of the earth are al- 
ready ripe, we are not to suppose there is no 
fruit left for winter to ripen. . . . Then is the 
great harvest of the year, the harvest of thought. 
All previous harvests are stubble to this, mere 
fodder and green crop. Our oil is winter-strained. 
Now we burn with a purer flame like the stars. 
— Shall we take refuge in cities in November ? 



WINTER. 295 

Shall the nut fall green from the tree ? Let not 
the year be disappointed of its crop. I knew a 
crazy man who walked into an empty pnlpit one 
Sunday, and taking up a hymn book, remarked, 
" We have had a good fall for getting in corn 
and potatoes, let us sing Winter." So I say, " Let 
us sing winter." What else can we sing, and 
our voices be in harmony with the season. . . . 

As we walked up the river, a little flock of 
chickadees apparently flew to us from a wood- 
side fifteen rods off, and uttered their lively day 
day day, and followed us along a considerable 
distance, flitting by our side on the button- 
bushes and willows. It is the most, if not the 
only, sociable bird we have. 

Jan. 30, 1856. . . . What a difference be- 
tween life in the city and life in the country at 
present ! between walking in Washington Street, 
threading your way between countless sledges 
and travelers over the discolored snow, and 
crossing Walden Pond, a spotless field of snow 
surrounded by woods, whose intensely blue 
shadows and your own are the only objects. 
What a solemn silence reigns here ! 

Jan. 30, 1859. How peculiar is the hooting 
of an owl ; not shrill and sharp like the scream 
of a hawk, but full, round, and sonorous, wak- 
ing the echoes of the wood. 

Jan. 30, 1860. 2 p. m. To Nut Meadow 



296 WINTER. 

and White Pond road. Thermometer -j-45°. 
Fair, with a few cumuli of indefinite outline in 
the N. and S., and dusky under sides. A gentle 
west wind and a blue haze. Thaws. . . . The 
ice has so melted on the meadows that I see 
where the muskrat has left his clamshells in a 
heap near the river side where there was a hol- 
low in the bank. — The small water-bugs are 
gyrating abundantly in Nut Meadow Brook. It 
is pleasant also to see the very distinct ripple 
marks in the sand at the bottom, of late so rare 
a sight. I go through the piny field N. W. of 
Martial Miles's. There are no more beautiful 
natural parks than these pastures in which the 
white pines have sprung up spontaneously, 
standing at handsome intervals, where the wind 
chanced to let the seed lie at last, and the grass 
and blackberry vines have not yet been killed 
by them. 

There are certain sounds invariably heard in 
warm and thawing days in winter, such as the 
crowing of cocks, the cawing of crows, and some- 
times the gobbling of turkeys. The crow, flying 
high, touches the tympanum of the sky for us, 
and reveals the tone of it. What does it avail 
to look at a thermometer or barometer compared 
with listening to his note ! He informs me that 
nature is in the tenderest mood possible, and I 
hear the very flutterings of her heart. — Crows 



WINTER. 297 

have singularly wild and suspicious ways. You 
will see a couple flying high, as if about their 
business, but, lo, they turn and circle over your 
head again and again for a mile, and this is 
their business, as if a mile and an afternoon were 
nothing for them to throw away ; this even in 
winter when they have no nests to be anxious 
about. But it is affecting to hear them cawing 
about their ancient seat . . . which the choppers 
are laying low. . . . 

The snow flea seems to be a creature whose 
summer and prime of life is a thaw in the win- 
ter. It seems not merely to enjoy this interval 
like other animals, but then chiefly to exist. 
It is the creature of the thaw. Moist snow is 
its element. That thaw which merely excites 
the cock to sound his clarion, as it were, calls to 
life the snow flea. 

Jan. 31, 1852. ... I am repeatedly aston- 
ished by the coolness and obtuse bigotry with 
which some will appropriate the New Testament 
in conversation with you. It is as if they were 
to appropriate the sun, and stand between you 
and it, because they understood you had walked 
once by moonlight, though that was in the re- 
flected light of the sun which you could not get 
directly. I have seen two persons conversing at 
a tea-table, both lovers of the New Testament, 
each in his own way, the one a lover of all 



298 WINTER. 

kindred expression of truth also, and yet the 
other appropriated the book wholly to herself, 
and took it for granted with singular or rather 
lamentable blindness and obtuseness that the 
former neither knew nor cared anything about 
it. Horace Greeley found some fault with me 
to the world, because I presumed to speak of 
the New Testament, using my own words and 
thoughts, and challenged me to a controversy. 
The one thought I had was that it would give 
me real pleasure to know that he loved it as sin- 
cerely and intelligently as I did. . . . 

That work of man's must be vast indeed 
which, like the pyramids, looks blue in the hori- 
zon, as mountains. Few works of man rise high 
enough, and with breadth enough to be blued by 
the air between them and the spectator. 

I hear my friend say, " I have lost my faith 
in men, there are none true, magnanimous, holy, 
etc., etc., meaning all the while that I do not 
possess those unattainable virtues. But, worm 
as I am, this is not wise in my friend, and I feel 
simply discouraged, so far as my relation to him 
is concerned. We must have infinite faith in 
each other. . . . He erects his want of faifch as 
a barrier between us. When I hear a grown 
man or woman say, " Once I had faith in men, 
now I have not," I am inclined to ask, " Who 
are you whom the world has disappointed? 



WINTER. 299 

Have not you rather disappointed the world ? 
There is the same ground for faith now that 
ever there was. It needs only a little love in 
you who complain so, to ground it on." For 
my own part, I am thankful there are those who 
come so near being my friends that they can be 
estranged from me. I had faith before ; they 
would destroy the little I have. The mason asks 
but a narrow shelf to spring his brick from ; 
man requires only an infinitely narrower one to 
spring the arch of faith from. . . . 

I am not sure that I have any right to address 
to you the words I am about to write. The 
reason I have not visited you oftener and more 
earnestly is that 1 am offended by your pride, 
your sometime assumption of dignity, your man- 
ners which come over me like waves of Lethe. I 
know that if I stood in that relation to you which 
you seem to ask, I should not be met. Per- 
haps I am wiser than you think. Do you never 
for an instant treat me as a thing, flatter me ? 
You treat me with politeness and I make myself 
scarce. We have not sympathy enough, do not 
always apprehend each other. You talk too, too 
often, as if I were Mr. Tompkins of the firm 

of , a retired merchant. If I had never 

thought of you as a friend, I could make much 
use of you as an acquaintance. . . . 

The value of the pitch pine in winter is that 



300 WINTER. 

it holds the snow so finely. I see it now afar on 
the hillsides decking itself with it, its whited 
towers forming coverts where the rabbit and the 
gray squirrel lurk. It makes the most cheerful 
winter scenery, beheld from the window, you 
know so well the nature of the coverts and the 
sombre light it makes. The young oaks with 
their red leaves, covering so many acres, are also 
an indispensable feature of the winter landscape, 
and the limbs of oak woods where some of the 
trees have been cut off. 

Jan. 31, 1854. p. m. To Great Meadows 
and Beck Stow's. The wind is more southerly, 
and now the warmth of the sun prevails and is 
felt on the back. The snow softens and melts. 
It is a beautiful, clear, and mild winter day. . . . 
But I do not melt. There is no thaw in me. I 
am bound out still. — I see the tree sparrows 
one or two at a time now and then all winter 
uttering a faint note, with their bright chestnut 
crown, and spot on breast, and barred wings. 
They represent the sparrows in winter. . . . 

In winter when there are no flowers, and leaves 
are rare, even large buds are interesting and 
somewhat exciting. I go a budding like a part- 
ridge. I am always attracted at this season by 
the buds of the swamp pink, the poplars, and 
the sweet gale. . . . 

We too have our thaws. They come to our 



WINTER. 301 

January moods, when our ice cracks, and our 
sluices break loose. Thought that was frozen 
up under stern experience gushes forth in feel- 
ing and expression, This is a freshet which 
carries away dams of accumulated ice. Our 
thoughts hide unexpressed like the buds under 
the downy or resinous scales. They would 
hardly keep a partridge from starving. If you 
would know what are my winter thoughts look 
in the partridge's crop. They are like the 
laurel buds, some leaf, some blossom buds, which, 
though food for such indigenous creatures, will 
not expand into leaves and flowers until summer 
comes. 

Jan. 31, 1855. A clear, cool, beautiful day; 
fine skating ; an unprecedented expanse of ice. 
At 10 a. M. skated up the river to explore far- 
ther than I had been. . . . The country almost 
completely bare of snow, only some ice in the 
roads and fields, and the frozen freshet at this 
remarkable height. I skated up as far as the 
boundary between Wayland and Sudbury, just 
above Pelham's Pond, about twelve miles, be- 
tween 10 A. M. and 1, quite leisurely. There I 
found the river open unexpectedly, as if there 
were a rapid there, and as I walked three 
quarters of a mile farther, it was still open be- 
fore me. . . . All the way I skated there was a 
chain of meadows, with the muskrat houses still 



302 WINTER. 

rising above the ice, commonly on the bank of 
the river, and marking it like smaller haycocks 
amid the large ones still left. — As I skated 
near the shore under Lee's Cliff, I saw what I 
took to be some scrags or knotty stubs of a 
dead limb, lying on the bank beneath a white 
oak, close by me. Yet while I looked closely at 
them, I could not but admire their close resem- 
blance to partridges. I had come along with a 
rapid whir, and suddenly halted right against 
them, only two rods distant, and as my eyes 
watered a little from skating against the wind, 
I was not convinced they were birds, till I had 
pulled out my glass and deliberately examined 
them. They sat and stood, three of them, per- 
fectly still, with their heads erect, some darker 
feathers, like ears methinks, increasing their re- 
semblance to scrags,"as where a small limb is 
broken off. I was much surprised at the re- 
markable stillness they preserved, instinctively 
relying on their resemblance to the ground for 
their protection, i. e., withered grass, dry oak 
leaves, dead scrags, and broken twigs. . . . For 
some time after I had noted their resemblance 
to birds, standing only two rods off, I could not 
be sure of their character on account of their 
perfect motionlessness, and it was not till I 
brought my glass to bear on them, and distinctly 
saw their eyes steadily glaring on me and their 



WINTER. 303 

necks and every muscle tense with anxiety, that I 
was convinced. At length, on some signal which 
I did not perceive, they went with a whir, as if 
shot off, over the bushes. 

Feb. 1, 1852. When I hear that a friend 
on whom I relied has spoken of me, not with 
cold words, perhaps, but even with a cold and 
indifferent tone, to another, ah ! what treachery 
I feel it to be ! the crime of all crimes against 
humanity. My friend may cherish a thousand 
suspicions against me, and they may but repre- 
sent his faith and expectation, till he cherishes 
them so heartlessly that he can speak of them. 

If I have not succeeded in my friendships, it 
was because I demanded more of them, and 
did not put up with what I could get ; and I 
got no more, partly because I gave so little. I 
must be dumb to those who do not, as I believe, 
appreciate my actions, not knowing the springs 
of them. 

While we preach obedience to human laws, 
and to that portion of the divine laws set forth 
in the New Testament, the natural laws of 
genius, of love and friendship, we do not preach 
nor insist upon. How many a seeming heart- 
lessness is to be explained by the very abun- 
dance of the heart. How much of seeming 
recklessness, even selfishness, is to be explained 
by obedience to this code of the divine laws. 



304 WINTER. 

It is evident that as buyers and sellers we obey 
a very different law from what we do as lovers 
and friends. The Hindoo is not to be tried in 
all things by the Christian standard, nor the 
Christian by the Hindoo. How much fidelity 
to law of a kind not commonly recognized, how 
much magnanimity even may be thrown away 
on mankind, is like pearls cast before swine ! 
The hero obeys his own law, the Christian, his, 
the lover and friend, theirs: they are to some 
extent different codes. What incessant tragedy 
between men when one silently obeys the code 
of friendship, the other, the code of philan- 
thropy, in their dealings with one another. As 
our constitutions and geniuses are different, so 
are our standards, and we are amenable to dif- 
ferent codes. My neighbor asks me in vain to 
be good as he is good. I must be good as I am 
made to be good, whether I am heathen or 
Christian. Every man's laws are hard enough 
to obey. The Christian falls as far short of 
obeying the heathen moral law as the heathen 
does. One of little faith looks for his rewards 
and punishments to the next world, and, de- 
spairing of this world, behaves accordingly in it ; 
another thinks the present a worthy occasion 
and arena, sacrifices to it, and expects to hear 
sympathizing voices. The man who believes in 
another world and not in this is wont to put me 



WINTER. 305 

off with Christianity. The present world in 
which we talk is of a little less value to him 
than the next world. So we are said to hope in 
proportion as we do not realize. It is all hope 
deferred. But one grain of realization, of in- 
stant life on which we stand, is equivalent to 
acres of the leaf of hope hammered out to gild 
our prospect. The former so qualifies the vis- 
ion that it gilds all we look upon with the splen- 
dor of truth. We must meet the hero on 
heroic grounds. Some tribes inhabit the moun- 
tains. Some dwell on the plains. We discour- 
age one another. We obey different laws. 

My friends ! my friends ! It does not cheer 
me to see them. They but express their want 
of faith in me or in mankind. Their coldest, 
cruellest thought comes clothed in polite and 
easy spoken words at last. I am silent to their 
invitations, because I do not feel invited, and we 
have no reasons to give for what we do not do. 
One says, " Love me out of this mire." The 
other says, " Come out of it and be lovely." 

Feb. 1, 1855. As I skated up the river yes- 
terday, now here, now there, past the old king- 
doms of my fancy, I was reminded of Lan- 
dor's Richard the First. " I sailed along the 
realms of my family ; on the right was England, 
on the left was France [on the right was Sud- 
bury, on the left was Wayland ] ; little else 



306 WINTER. 

could I discover than sterile eminences and ex- 
tensive shoals. They fled behind me; so pass 
away generations; so shift and sink, and die 
away affections." " I debark in Sicily." [That 
was Tali's Island.] " I sail again, and within a 
day or two [hour or two] I behold, as the sun is 
setting, the solitary majesty of Crete [that was 
Nobscot surely], mother of a religion, it is said, 
that lived two thousand years. Onward, and 
many specks bubble up along the blue iEgean." 
These must have been the muskrat houses in 
the meadows. " Every one," I have no doubt, 
" the monument of a greater man [being ?] than 
I am." The swelling river was belching on a 
high key from ten to eleven, quite a musical 
cracking, running like chain lightning of sound 
athwart my course. ... As I passed, the ice 
forced up by the water on one side suddenly 
settled on another with a crash, and quite a lake 
was formed above the ice behind me, so that my 
successor two hours after, to his wonder and 
alarm, saw my tracks disappear on one side of 
it and come, out on the other. My seat from 
time to time is the springy horizontal bough of 
some fallen tree which is frozen into the ice, some 
old maple that was blown over and retained some 
life a year after, in the water, covered with the 
great shaggy perforate parmelia. Lying flat 
I quench my thirst where the ice is melted 



WINTER. 307 

about it, blowing aside the snow fleas. The 
great arundo in the Sudbury meadows was all 
level with the ice. There was a great bay of ice 
stretching up the Pantry, and up Larned Brook. 
I looked up a broad, glaring bay of ice at the 
last place which seemed to reach to the base of 
Nobscot and almost to the horizon. Some dead 
maple or oak saplings laid side by side made my 
bridges, by which I got on to the ice along the 
watery shore. It was a problem to get off, and 
another to get on, dry shod. 

Feb. 1, 1857. 3 P. M. Down railroad. Ther- 
mometer at -f- 42°. Warm as it is, I see a large 
flock of snow buntings on the railroad cause- 
way. Their wings are white above, next the 
body, but black or dark beyond, and on the 
back. This produces that regular black and 
white effect when they fly past you. 

Feb. 1, 1858. Measured Gowing's swamp 
two and one half rods N. E. of the middle of 
the hole, i. e., in the andromeda and sphagnum 
near its edge, where I stand in the summer ; 
also five rods N. E. of the middle of the open 
hole, or in the midst of the andromeda. In 
both these places the pole went hard at first, 
but broke through a crust of roots and sphag- 
num at about three feet beneath the surface, 
and I then easily pushed it down just twenty 
feet. This being a small pole, I could not push 



308 WINTER. 

it any farther, holding it by the small end. It 
bent then. With a longer and stiffer pole, I 
could probably have fathomed thirty feet. It 
seems then that there is over this andromeda 
swamp a crust about three feet thick of sphag- 
num, andromeda calyculata and polifolia, and 
kalmia glauca, beneath which there is almost 
clear water, and under that an exceedingly thin 
mud. There can be no soil above the mud, and 
yet there are three or four larch trees three feet 
high or more between these holes, or over ex- 
actly the same water, and small spruce trees 
near by. For aught that appears, the swamp is 
as deep under the andromedas as in the middle. 
The two andromedas and the kalmia glauca may 
be more truly said to grow in water than in soil 
there. When the surface of a swamp shakes for 
a rod around you, you may conclude that it is a 
network of roots two or three feet thick resting 
on water or very thin mud. The surface of that 
swamp, composed in great part of sphagnum, is 
really floating. It evidently begins with sphag- 
num which floats on the surface of clear water, 
and accumulating, at length affords a basis for 
that large-seeded sedge (?), andromeda, etc. The 
filling up of a swamp then, in this case at least, 
is not the result of a deposition of vegetable 
matter washed into it, settling to the bottom, 
and leaving the surface clear, so filling it up from 



WINTER. 309 

the bottom to the top. But the vegetation first 
extends itself over it in a film which gradually 
thickens till it supports shrubs, and completely 
conceals the water. The under part of this 
crust drops to the bottom, so that it is filled up 
first at the top and bottom, and the middle part 
is the last to be reclaimed from the water. Per- 
haps this swamp is in the process of becoming 
peat. It has been partially drained by a ditch. 
— I fathomed also two rods within the edge of 
the blueberry bushes, in the path, but I could 
not force a pole down more than eight feet five 
inches, so it is much more solid there, and the 
blueberry bushes require a firmer soil than the 
water andromeda. — This is a regular quag or 
shaking surface, and in this way evidently float- 
ing islands are formed. I am not sure but that 
meadow, with all its bushes in it, would float a 
man-of-war. 

Feb. 2, 1841. It is easy to repeat, but hard 
to originate. Nature is readily made to repeat 
herself in a thousand forms, and, in the daguerre- 
otype, her own light is amanuensis. The pic- 
ture, too, has more than a surface significance, 
a depth equal to the prospect, so that the micro- 
scope may be applied to the one, as the spy- 
glass to the other. Thus we may easily multi- 
ply the forms of the outward, but to give the 
within outwardness, that is not easy. 



310 WINTER. 

That an impression may be taken, perfect 
stillness, though but for an instant, is necessary. 
There is something analogous in the birth of all 
rhymes. 

Our sympathy is a gift whose value we can 
never know, nor when we impart it. The in- 
stant of communion is when, for the least point 
of time, we cease to oscillate and coincide in rest, 
by as fine a point as a star pierces the firma- 
ment. . . . 

There is always a single ear in the audience 
to which we address ourselves. 

How much does it concern you, the good 
opinion of your friend! Therein is the meas- 
ure of fame. For the herd of men multiplied 
many times will never come up to the value of 
one friend. In this society there is no fame but 
love, for as our name may be on the lips of men, 
so are we in each other's hearts. There is no 
ambition but virtue, for why should we go round 
about who may go direct ? . . . 

For our aspirations there is no expression as 
yet, but if we obey steadily, by another year we 
shall have learned the language of last year's 
aspirations. . . . 

Weight has something very imposing in it, 
for we cannot get rid of it. Once in the scales 
we must weigh. And are we not always in the 
scales, and weighing just our due, though we 



WINTER. 311 

kick the beam, and do all we can to make our- 
selves heavier or lighter? 

Feb. 2, 1853. The Stellaria media [common 
chickweed] is full of frost-bitten blossoms con- 
taining stamens, etc., still, and half -grown buds. 
Apparently it never rests. 

Feb. 2, 1854. Up river on ice to Clematis 
Brook. Another warm, melting day, like yester- 
day. You can see some softening and relenting 
in the sky. Apparently the vapor in the air 
makes a grosser atmosphere more like that of a 
summer eve. We go up the Corner road and 
take the ice at Potter's meadow. The Cliff 
Hill is nearly bare on the west side, and you 
hear the rush of melted snow down its side in 
one place. Here and there are regular round 
holes in the ice over the meadow two or three 
feet in diameter where the water appears to 
be warmer, and where are springs, perchance. 
Therein in shallow water is seen the cress and 
one or two other plants still quite fresh. The 
shade of pines on the snow is in some lights 
quite blue. We stopped a while under Bittern 
Cliff, the south side, where it is very warm. 
There are a few greenish radical leaves to be 
seen, primrose, Johnswort, strawberry, etc., and 
spleen wort still green in the clefts. These 
sunny old gray rocks completely covered with 
white and gray lichens, and overrun with ivy, 



312 WINTER. 

are a very cozy place. You hardly detect the 
melted snow swiftly trickling down them, until 
you feel the drops on your cheek. The winter 
gnat is seen in the air before the rocks. In 
their clefts are the latebrae of many insects, 
spiders, etc. . . . 

The ice is eighteen inches thick on Fair 
Haven. Saw some pickerel just caught there 
with a fine lustre on them. — Went to the pond 
in the woods which has an old ditch dug from it 
near Clematis Brook. The red twigs of the 
cornel and the yellow ones of the sallows sur- 
rounding it are interesting at this season. We 
prize the least color now. As it is a melting 
day, the snow is everywhere peppered with snow 
fleas, even twenty rods from the woods, on the 
pond and meadows. 

The scream of the jay is a true winter sound. 
It is wholly without sentiment, and in harmony 
with winter. — I stole up within five or six rods 
of a pitch pine behind which a downy wood- 
pecker was pecking. From time to time he 
hopped round to the side towards me, and ob- 
served me without fear. They are very confident 
birds, not easily scared, but incline to keep the 
other side of the bough from you, perhaps. 

Already we begin to anticipate spring, to say 
that the day is spring-like. This is an important 
difference between this time and a month ago. 



WINTER. 313 

Is not January the hardest month to get 
through? When you have weathered that, you 
get into the gulf stream of winter, nearer the 
shores of spring. 

Feb. 2, 1855. . . . This last half inch of 
snow which fell in the night is just enough to 
track animals on the ice by. All about the 
Hill and Kock I see the tracks of rabbits which 
have run back and forth close to the shore re- 
peatedly since the night. In the case of the 
rabbit, the fore feet are farther apart than the 
hind ones, the first, four or five inches to the 
stride, the last, two or three. They are gener- 
ally not quite regular, but one of the fore feet a 
little in advance of the other, and so with the 
hind feet. There is an interval of about sixteen 
inches between each four tracks. Sometimes 
they are in a curve or crescent, all touching. 

I saw what must have been a muskrat's or 
mink's track, I think, since it came out of the 
water ; the tracks roundish, and toes much rayed 
four or five inches apart on the trail, with only 
a trifle more between the fore and hind legs, 
and the mark of the tail in successive curves as 
it struck the ice. — Another track puzzled me, 
as if a hare had been running like a dog 
( — * . — • . — * . eighteen inches apart), and 
touched its tail, if it had one. This in several 
places. 



314 WINTER. 

Feb. 2, 1858. ... As I return from the post- 
office I hear the hoarse, robin-like chirp of a song 
sparrow, . . . and see him perched on the top- 
most twig of a heap of brush, looking forlorn, 
and drabbled, and solitary in the rain. 

Feb. 2,1860. 6° at about 8 a. m. ... 2p.m. 
to Fair Haven Pond. The river, which was 
breaking up, is frozen over again. The new ice 
over the channel is of a yellow tinge, and is cov- 
ered with handsome rosettes two or three inches 
in diameter where the vapor which rose through 
froze and crystallized. This new ice for forty 
rods together is thickly covered with these 
rosettes, often as thick as snow, an inch deep. 
. . . The frozen breath of the river at a myriad 
breathing holes. . . . 

It is remarkable that the straw-colored sedge 
of the meadows, which in the fall is one of the 
least noticeable colors, should now, that the land- 
scape is mostly covered with snow, be perhaps 
the most noticeable of all objects in it for 
its color, and an agreeable contrast to the 
snow. . . . 

I see where some meadow mouse (if not mole) 
just came to the surface of the snow, enough 
to break it with his back for three or four 
inches, then put his head out, and at once 
withdrew it. 

We walked as usual in the fresh track of a 



WINTER. 315 

fox, peculiarly pointed, and sometimes the mark 
of two toe-nails in front separate from the track 
of the foot in very thin snow. As we were kin- 
dling a fire on the pond by the side of the 
island, we saw the fox himself at the inlet of the 
river. He was busily examining along the sides 
of the pond by the button - bushes and wil- 
lows, smelling in the snow. Not appearing to 
regard us much, he slowly explored along the 
shore of the pond thus half way round it ; at 
Pleasant Meadow evidently looking for mice (or 
moles ?) in the grass of the bank, smelling in 
the shallow snow there, amid the stubble, often 
retracing his steps, and pausing at particular 
spots. He was eagerly searching for food, intent 
on finding some mouse to help fill his empty 
stomach. He had a blackish tail and blackish 
feet, looked lean, and stood high. The tail 
peculiarly large for any creature to carry round. 
He stepped daintily about, softly, and is more 
to the manor born than a dog. It was a very 
arctic scene this cold day, and I suppose he 
would hardly have ventured out in a warm one. 
— The fox seems to get his living by industry 
and perseverance. He runs smelling for miles 
along the most favorable routes, especially the 
edge of rivers and ponds, till he smells the track 
of a mouse beneath the snow, or the fresh track 
of a partridge, and then follows it till he comes 



316 WINTER. 

upon his game. . . . There may be a dozen 
partridges resting in the snow within a square 
mile, and his work is simply to find them with 
the end of his nose. Compared with the dog 
he affects me as high-bred, unmixed. There is 
nothing of the mongrel in him. He belongs to 
a noble family which has seen its best days, a 
younger son. Now and then he starts, and 
turns, and doubles on his track, as if he heard 
or scented danger. (I watch him through my 
glass.) He does not mind us at the distance of 
only sixty rods. I have myself seen to-day one 
place where a mouse came to the surface in the 
snow. Probably he has smelled out many such 
galleries. Perhaps he seizes them through the 
snow. — I had a transient vision of one mouse 
this winter, and that the first for a number of 
years. 

Feb. 3, 1841. The present seems never to get 
its due. It is the least obvious, neither before 
nor behind, but within us. All the past plays 
into this moment, and we are what we are. My 
aspiration is one thing, my reflection, another ; 
but, over all, myself and condition — is and 
does. To men and nature I am each moment 
a finished tool, — a spade, a barrow, a pickaxe. 
This immense promise is no efficient quality. 
For all practical purposes I am done. . . . 

We are constantly invited to be what we are, 



WINTER. 317 

as to something worthy and noble. I never 
waited but for myself to come round ; none ever 
detained me, but I lagged or staggered after 
myself. 

It steads us to be as true to children and 
boors, as to God himself. It is the only atti- 
tude which will meet all occasions. I It only will 
make the earth yield her increase, — and by it 
do we effectually expostulate with the wind. 
If I run against a post, this is the remedy. 

I would meet the morning and evening on 
very sincere ground. When the sun introduces 
me to a new day, I silently say to myself, " Let 
us be faithful all round. We will do justice 
and receive it." Something like this is the 
secret charm of Nature's demeanor towards us* 
strict conscientiousness, and disregard of us 
when we have ceased to have regard for our- 
selves. So she can never offend us. How true 
she is, and never swerves. In her most genial 
moment, her laws are as steadfastly and relent- 
lessly fulfilled (though the decalogue is rhymed 
and set to sweetest music), as in her sternest. 

Any exhibition of affection, as an inadvertent 
word, or act, or look, seems premature, as if the 
time were not ripe for it, like the buds which 
the warm days near the end of winter cause to 
push out and unfold before the frosts are yet 
gone. 



318 WINTER. 

My life must seem as if it were passing on a 
higher level than that which I occupy. It must 
possess a dignity which will not allow me to be 
familiar. 

Feb. 3, 1852. When I review the list of my 
acquaintances from the most impartial point of 
view, and consider each one's excesses and de- 
fects of character which are the subject of 
mutual ridicule and astonishment and pity (and 
I class myself among them), I cannot help ask- 
ing myself, "If this is the sane world, what 
must a mad-house be ? " It is only by a certain 
flattery, and an ignoring of their faults, that 
even the best are made available for society. 

I have been to the libraries (yesterday) at 
Cambridge and Boston. It would seem as if 
all things compelled us to originality. How 
happens it that I find not in the country, in the 
fields and woods, the works even of like-minded 
naturalists and poets. Those who have ex- 
pressed the purest and deepest love of nature 
have not recorded it on the bark of the trees 
with the lichens, they have left no memento of 
it there ; but if I would read their books, I must 
go to the city, so strange and repulsive both to 
them and to me, and deal with men and institu- 
tions with whom I have no sympathy. When I 
have just been there on this errand, it seems too 
great a price to pay even for access to the works 



WINTER. 319 

of Homer or Chaucer or Linnaeus. Greece and 
Asia Minor should henceforth bear Iliads and 
Odysseys, as their trees lichens. But, no; if 
the works of nature are, to any extent, collected 
in the forest, the works of men are, to a still 
greater extent, collected in the city. I have 
sometimes imagined a library, i. e., a collection 
of the works of true poets, philosophers, natu- 
ralists, etc., deposited not in a brick or marble 
edifice in a crowded and dusty city, guarded by 
cold-blooded and methodical officials, and preyed 
on by bookworms, in which you own no share, 
and are not likely to, but rather far away in the 
depths of a primitive forest, like the ruins of 
Central America, where you could trace a series 
of crumbling alcoves, the older books protecting 
the more modern from the elements, partially 
buried by the luxuriance of nature, which the 
heroic student could only reach after adventures 
in the wilderness amid wild beasts and wild 
men. That, to my imagination, seems a fitter 
place for these interesting relics which owe no 
small part of their interest to their antiquity, 
and whose occasion is nature, than the well-pre- 
served edifice, with its well-preserved officials, on 
the side of a city's square. More terrible than 
lions and tigers, these libraries. Access to na- 
ture for original observation is secured by one 
ticket, by one kind of expense ; but access to the 



320 WINTER. 

works of your predecessors, by a very different 
kind of expense. All things tend to cherish the 
originality of the original. Nature, at least, 
takes no pains to introduce him to the works of 
his predecessors, but only presents him with her 
own opera omniia. Is it the lover of nature who 
has access to all that has been written on the 
subject of his favorite studies ? No ; he lives 
far away from this. It is the lover of books 
and systems who knows nature chiefly at second 
hand. . . . 

About 6 p. M. walked to Cliffs ma railroad. 
Snow quite deep. The sun had set without a 
cloud in the sky ; a rare occurrence, but I missed 
the clouds which make the glory of evening. The 
sky must have a few clouds, as the mind a few 
moods ; nor is the evening less serene for them. 
There is only a tinge of red along the horizon. 
The moon is nearly full to-night, and the moment 
is passed when the light in the east (i. e., of the 
moon) balances the light in the west. . . . It is 
perfectly still, and not very cold. The shadows 
of the trees on the snow are more minutely dis- 
tinct than at any other season, not dark masses 
merely, but finely reticulated, each limb and twig 
represented, as cannot be in summer both from 
the leaves and the inequality and darkness of 
the ground. ... I hear my old acquaintance, 
the owl, from the causeway. The reflector of 



WINTER. 321 

the cars, as I stand over the Deep Cut, makes a 
large and dazzling light in this air, . . . and 
now whizzes the boiling, sizzling kettle by me, 
in which the passengers make me think of pota- 
toes which a fork would show to be done by this 
time. The steam is denser for the cold, and 
more white ; like the purest downy clouds in the 
summer sky its volumes roll up between me and 
the moon, and far behind, when the cars are a 
mile off, it still goes shading the fields with its 
wreaths, the breath of the panting traveler. I 
now cross from the railroad to the road. This 
snow, the last of which fell day before yesterday, 
is two feet deep, pure and powdery. . . . From 
a myriad little crystal mirrors the moon is re- 
flected, which is the untarnished sparkle of its 
surface. I hear a gentle rustling of the oak 
leaves as I go through the woods, but this snow 
has yet no troops of leaves on its surface The 
snow evidently by its smooth crust assists in the 
more equal dispersion and distribution of the 
leaves which course over it, blown by the wind. 
Perchance, for this reason, the oak leaves and 
some others hang on. . . . 

[On Fair Haven Hill.] Instead of the sound 
of his [the chopper's] axe, I hear the hooting of 
an owl, nocturnus ululatus, whose haunts he is 
laying waste. The ground is all pure white, 
powdery snow, which his sled, etc., has stirred 



322 WINTER. 

up, except the scattered twigs and pine plumes. 
I can see every track distinctly where the team- 
ster drove his oxen and loaded his sled, and 
even the tracks of his dog, in the moonlight, and 
plainly to w r rite this. — The moonlight now is 
very splendid in the untouched pine woods above 
the Cliffs, alternate patches of shade and light. 
The light has almost the brightness of sunlight, 
the fulgor. The stems of the trees are more 
obvious than by day, being simple black against 
the moonlight and the snow. The sough of the 
breeze in the pine tops sounds far away like the 
surf on a distant shore, and for all sound be- 
side, there is only the rattling or chafing of little 
dry twigs, perchance a little snow falling on 
them, or they are so brittle that they break and 
fall with the motion of the trees. — My owl 
sounds hoo-hoo-hoo — hoo. 

The landscape covered with snow seen from 
these Cliffs, encased in snowy armor two feet 
thick, gleaming in the moonlight and of spotless 
white, who can believe that this is the habitable 
globe. The scenery is wholly arctic. Fair Ha- 
ven Pond is a Baffin's Bay. Man must have 
ascertained the limits of the winter before he 
ventured to withstand it, and not migrate with 
the birds. No cultivated field, no house, no 
candle. All is as dreary as the shores of the 
frozen ocean. I can tell where there is wood 



WINTER. 323 

and where open land for many miles in the hori- 
zon by the darkness of the former and whiteness 
of the latter. ... It looks as if the snow and 
ice of the arctic world, traveling like a glacier, 
had crept down southward and overwhelmed 
New England. See if a man can think his sum- 
mer thoughts now. — But the evening star is 
preparing to set, and I will return, floundering 
through snow, sometimes up to my middle. . . . 

The forcible writer stands bodily behind his 
words with his experience. He does not make 
books out of books, but he has been there in 
person. . . . 

That is a good mythological incident told of 
the wounded farmer who, his foot being lacer- 
ated and held fast between his plow and a 
fallen tree in a forest clearing, drew his oxen to 
him with difficulty, smeared their horns with 
blood which the mosquitoes had drawn from his 
bare arms, and cutting the reins, sent them home 
as an advertisement to his family. 

Feb. 3, 1854. . . . Varro speaks of two 
kinds of pigeons, one of which was wont to 
alight on the ( Columinibus villce) columns of a 
villa (a quo appellatm columbce), from which 
they were called " Columbae" These, on ac- 
count of their natural timidity (jsumma loca in 
tectis captant), delight in the highest places on 
the roofs (or under cover) ? 



324 . WINTER. 

Feb. 3, 1855. . . . Skated up the river with 

T n in spite of the snow and wind. . . . 

We went up the Pantry meadow . . . and came 
down . . . again with the wind and snow dust, 
spreading our coat tails, like birds, though some- 
what at the risk of our necks, if we had struck 
a foul place. I found that I could sail on a 
tack pretty well, trimming with my skirts. 
Sometimes we had to jump suddenly over some 
obstacle, which the snow had concealed, to save 
our necks. It was worth the while for one to 
look back against the sun and wind, and see the 
other sixty rods off, . . . floating down like a 
graceful demon in the midst of the broad 
meadow, all covered and lit with the curling 
snow steam, between which you saw the ice in 
dark, waving streaks, like a mighty river 
Orellana braided of a myriad steaming cur- 
rents ; like the demon of the storm driving his 
flocks and herds before him. In the midst of 
this tide of curling snow steam, he sweeps and 
surges this way and that, and comes on like the 
spirit of the whirlwind. At Lee's Cliff we made 
a fire, kindling with white pine cones, after oak 
leaves and twigs, else we had lost it. The cones 
saved us, for there is a resinous drop at the 
point of each scale. There we forgot that we 
were out doors in a blustering winter day. Flash 
go your dry leaves like powder, and leave a few 



WINTER. 325 

bare and smoking twigs. Then you sedulously 
feed a little flame until the fire takes hold of 
the solid wood and establishes itself. What an 
uncertain and negative thing is fire when it 
finds nothing to suit its appetite after the first 
flash. What a positive and inexpugnable thing, 
when it begins to devour the solid wood with a 
relish, burning with its own wind. You must 
think as long at last how to put it out as you 
did how to kindle it. Close up under some 
upright rock where you scorch the yellow sul- 
phur lichens. Then cast on some creeping juni- 
per wreaths or hemlock boughs to hear them 
crackle, realizing scripture. 

Some little boys ten years old are as hand- 
some skaters as I know. They sweep along 
with a graceful, floating motion, leaning now to 
this side, then to that, like a marsh hawk beat- 
ing the bush. . . . 

I still recur in my mind to that skating tour 
of the 31st. I was thus enabled to get a bird's- 
eye view of the river, to survey its length and 
breadth within a few hours, connect one part 
or shore with another in my mind, and realize 
what was going on upon it from end to end, to 
know the whole, as I ordinarily knew a few 
miles of it only. I connected the chestnut-tree 
house near the shore in Wayland with the chim- 
ney house in Billerica, Pelham's Pond with 



326 WINTER. 

Nutting's Pond in Billerica. There is good 
skating from the mouth to Saxon ville, measure- 
ing in a straight line some twenty-two miles, by 
the river say thirty now. It is all the way of 
one character, a meadow river, or dead stream. 
Musketicook, the abode of muskrats, pickerel, 
etc., crossed within these dozen miles each way, 
or thirty in all, by some twenty low wooden 
bridges, sublicii pontes, connected with the 
mainland by willowy causeways. Thus the 
long shallow lakes are divided into reaches. 
These long causeways all under water and ice 
now, only the bridges peeping out from time to 
time, like a dry eyelid. You must look close to 
find them in many cases, mere islands are they 
to the traveler in this waste of water and ice. 
Only two villages lying near the river, Concord 
and Wayland, and one at each end of this thirty 
miles. ... I used some bits of wood with a 
groove in them for crossing the causeways and 
gravelly places, that I might not scratch my 
skate irons. 

Feb. 3, 1856. ... p. M. Up North Branch. 
A strong N. W. wind (and thermometer 11°) 
driving the snow like steam. About five inches 
of soft snow now on ice. . . . Returning, saw 
near the Island a shrike glide by, cold and blus- 
tering as it was, with a remarkably even and 
steady sail or gliding motion, like a hawk, eight 



WINTER. 327 

or ten feet above the ground, and alight on a 
tree from which, at the same instant, a small 
bird, perhaps a creeper or nuthatch, flitted tim- 
idly away. The shrike was apparently in pur- 
suit. 

We go wading through snow now up the 
bleak river, in the face of a cutting N. W. wind 
and driving snow-storm, turning now this ear, 
now that, to the wind, our gloved hands in our 
bosoms or our pockets. How different this from 
sailing or paddling up the stream here in July, 
or poling amid the rocks ! Yet still, in one 
square rod where they have got out ice and a 
thin transparent covering has formed, I can 
see the pebbly bottom as in summer. 

There comes a deep snow in midwinter cover- 
ing up the ordinary food of many birds and 
quadrupeds, but anon a high wind scatters the 
seeds of pines, hemlocks, birches, alders, etc., far 
and wide over the surface of the snow, for them. 

You may now observe plainly the habit of the 
rabbits to run in paths about the swamps. 

Mr. Emerson, who returned last week from 
lecturing, on the Mississippi, having been gone 
but a month, tells me that he saw boys skating 
on the Mississippi, and on Lake Erie, and on 
the Hudson, and has no doubt they are skating 
on Lake Superior. Probably at Boston he might 
have seen them skating on the Atlantic. 



328 WINTER. 

In Barber's " Historical Collections," p. 476, 
there is a letter by Cotton Mather dated " Bos- 
ton, 10th Dec, 1717," describing the great snow 
of the preceding February, from which I quote : 
" On the twentieth of the last February there 
came on a snow, which being added unto what 
had covered the ground a few days before, made 
a thicker mantle for our mother than what was 
usual. And the storm with it was, for the fol- 
lowing day, so violent as to make all communi- 
cation between the neighbors everywhere to 
cease. People, foi some hours, could not pass 
from one side of a street to another." 

" On the twenty-fourth day of the month 
came Pelion upon Ossa. Another snow came 
on, which almost buried the memory of the for- 
mer, with a storm so famous that Heaven laid 
an interdict on the religious assemblies through- 
out the country on the Lord's day, the like 
whereunto had never been seen before. The 
Indians near an hundred years old affirm that 
their fathers never told them of anything that 
equaled it. Vast numbers of cattle were de- 
stroyed in this calamity, whereof some there 
were of the stranger [stronger ?] sort, were 
found standing dead on their legs, as if they 
had been alive, many weeks after when the 
snow melted away. And others had their eyes 
glazed over with ice at such a rate, that being 



WINTER. 329 

not far from the sea, their mistake of their way- 
drowned them there. One gentleman on whose 
farms were lost above eleven hundred sheep, 
which with other cattle, were interred (shall I 
say) or innived in the snow, writes me word 
that there were two sheep very singularly cir- 
cumstanced. For, no less than eight and twenty 
days after the storm, the people pulling out the 
ruins of above an hundred sheep out of a snow 
bank which lay sixteen foot high drifted over 
them, there was two found alive which had been 
there all this time, and kept themselves alive by 
eatiog the wool of their dead companions. When 
they were taken out, they shed their own fleeces, 
but soon got into good case again." 

"Aman had a couple of young hogs which 
he gave over for dead, bat on the twenty-seventh 
day after their burial, they made their way out 
of a snow bank, at the bottom of which they 
had found a little tansy to feed upon." " Hens 
were found alive after seven days ; turkeys 
were found alive after five and twenty days, 
buried in the snow, and at a distance from the 
ground, and altogether destitute of anything to 
feed them." — " The wild creatures of the woods, 
[at] the outgoing of the evening, made their 
descent as well as they could in this time of 
scarcity for them, towards the sea-side. A vast 
multitude of deer, for the same cause, taking 



330 WINTER. 

the same course, and the deep snow spoiling 
them of their only defense, which is to run, they 
became such a prey to these devourers that it is 
thought not one in twenty escaped." — " It 
is incredible how much damage is done to the or- 
chards, for the snow freezing to a crust as high as 
the bows of the trees, anon split them to pieces. 
The cattle, also, walking on the crusted snow 
a dozen feet from the ground, so fed upon the 
trees as very much to damnify them." " Cot- 
tages were totally covered with the snow, and 
not the very tops of their chimneys to be seen." 
These " odd accidents," he says, " would afford 
a story. But there not being any relation to 
Philosophy in them, I forbear them." He little 
thought that his simple testimony to such facts 
as the above would be worth all the philosophy 
he might dream of. 

Feb. 3, 1857. To Fitchburg to lecture. — 
Though the snow was not deep, I noticed that 
an unbroken snow crust stretched around Fitch- 
burg ; and its several thousand inhabitants had 
been confined so long to the narrow streets, some 
of them a track only six feet wide. Hardly one 
individual had anywhere departed from this nar- 
row walk, and struck out into the surrounding 
fields and hills. If I had had my cowhide 
boots, I should not have confined myself to those 
narrow limits, but have climbed some of the hills. 



WINTER. 331 

It is surprising to go into a N. E. town in mid- 
winter and find its five thousand inhabitants all 
living thus on the limits, confined at most to 
their narrow moose-yard in the snow. Scarcely 
here and there has a citizen stepped aside one 
foot to let a sled pass. xA_nd about as circum- 
scribed is their summer life, going out from house 
to shop, and back to house again. If, Indian- 
like, one examined the dew or beaded grass, he 
would be surprised to discover how little trod- 
den or frequented the surrounding fields were. 
... It is as if some vigilance committee had 
given notice that if any should transgress these 
narrow limits, he should be outlawed and his 
blood should be upon his own head. 

Feb. 3, 1858. ... I do not see this year, and 
I do not know that I ever have seen, any un- 
seasonable swelling of the buds of indigenous 
plants in mild winters. 

Feb. 3, 1859. Five minutes before 3 P. m. 
father died. ... I have touched a body which 
was flexible and warm, yet tenantless — warmed 
by what fire ? When the spirit that animated 
some matter has left it, who else, what else, can 
animate it? 

How enduring are our bodies after all ! The 
forms of our brothers and sisters, our parents 
and children and wives, lie still in the hills and 
fields round about us, not to mention those of 



332 WINTER. 

our remoter ancestors, and the matter which 
composed the body of our first human father 
still exists under another name. 

When in sickness the body is emaciated, and 
the expression of the face in various ways is 
changed, you perceive unexpected resemblances 
to other members of the same family, as if within 
the same family there was a greater general 
similarity in the framework of the face than in 
its filling up and clothing. . . . 

Some have spoken slightingly of the Indians, 
as a race possessing so little skill and wit, so 
low in the scale of humanity, and so brutish 
that they hardly deserved to be remembered, 
using only the terms, miserable, wretched, piti- 
ful, and the like. In writing their histories of 
this country, they have so hastily disposed of 
this refuse of humanity (as they might have 
called it), which littered and defiled the shore 
and the interior. But even the indigenous ani- 
mals are inexhaustibly interesting to us. How 
much more then the indigenous men of Amer- 
ica ! If wild men, so much more like ourselves 
than they are unlike, have inhabited these shores 
before us, we wish to know particularly what 
manner of men they were, how they lived here, 
their relation to nature, their arts and their cus- 
toms, their fancies and superstitions. They 
paddled over these waters, they wandered in 



WINTER. 333 

these woods, and they had tjieir fancies and be- 
liefs connected with the sea and the forest, 
which concern us quite as much as the fables of 
Oriental nations do. It frequently happens that 
the historian, though he professes more human- 
ity than the trapper, the mountain man, or gold 
digger, who shoots one as a wild beast, in reality 
exhibits and practices a similar inhumanity to 
his, wielding a pen instead of a rifle. — One 
tells you with more contempt than pity that the 
Indian has no religion, holding up both hands, 
and this to all the shallow-brained and bigoted 
seems to mean something important. But it is 
a distinction without a difference. Pray how 

much more religion has the historian ? If 

knows so much more about God than another, if 
he has made some discovery of truth in this di- 
rection, I would thank him to publish it in " Silli- 
man's Journal," with as few flourishes as possi- 
ble. It is the spirit of humanity, that which 
animates both so-called savages and civilized 
nations, working through a man, and not the 
man expressing himself, that interests us most. 
The thought of a so-called savage tribe is gen- 
erally far more just than that of a single civil- 
ized man. 

I perceive that we partially die ourselves, 
through sympathy, at the death of each of our 
friends or near relatives. Each such experience 



334 WINTER. 

is an assault on oup? vital force. It becomes a 
source of wonder that they who have lost many- 
friends still live. After long watching around 
the sick-bed of a friend, we too partially give up 
the ghost with him, and are the less to be iden- 
tified with this state of things. 

The writer must, to some extent, inspire him- 
self. Most of the sentences may at first be dead 
in his essay, but when all are arranged, some 
life and color will be reflected on them from the 
mature and successful lines. They will appear 
to pulsate with past life, and he will be enabled 
to eke out their slumbering sense, and make 
them worthy of their neighborhood. In his first 
essay on a given theme, he produces scarcely 
more than a frame and ground-work for his sen- 
timent and poetry. Each clear thought that he 
attains to, draws in its train many kindred 
thoughts or perceptions. The writer has much 
to do even to create a theme for himself. Most 
that is first written on any subject is a mere 
groping after it, mere rubble-stone and foun- 
dation. It is only when many observations of 
different periods have been brought together 
that he begins to grasp his subject, and can 
make one pertinent and just observation. 

Feb. 3, 1860. . . . When I read some of the 
rules for speaking and writing the English lan- 
guage correctly, as that a sentence must never 



WINTER. 335 

end with a particle, and perceive how implicitly 
even the learned obey it, I think 

Any fool can make a rule, 
And every fool will mind it. 

Feb. 4, 1841. . . . Music can make the most 
nervous chord vibrate healthily. . . . 

Wait till you can be genuinely polite, though 
it be till doomsday, and not lose your chance 
everlastingly by a cowardly yielding to young 
etiquette. . . . 

Not only by his cunning hand and brain, but 
when he speaks, too, does man assert his superi- 
ority. He conquers the spaces with his voice as 
well as the lion. The voice of a strong man 
modulated to the cadence of some tune is more 
imposing than any natural sound. The keeper's 
is the most commanding voice in the menag- 
erie, and is heard over all its din. A strong, 
musical voice imposes a new order and harmony 
upon nature. From it as a centre, a law is 
promulgated to the universe. What it lacks in 
volume and loudness may always be made up in 
musical expression and distinctness. The brute 
growls to secure obedience, he threatens ; the man 
speaks as if obedience were already secured. 

Feb. 4, 1852. A mild, thawy day. The 
needles of the pine are the touchstone for the air. 
Any change in that element is revealed to the 
practiced eye by their livelier green or increased 



336 WINTER. 

motion. They are the tell-tales. Now they are 
(the white pine) a cadaverous, misty blue, anon a 
lively . . . light plays on them, and they seem to 
erect themselves unusually, while the pitch pines 
are a brighter yellowish green than usual. The 
sun loves to nestle in the boughs of the pine and 
pass rays through them. — The scent of bruised 
pine leaves where a sled has passed is a little 
exciting to me now. 

I saw this afternoon such lively, blood-red 
colors on a white pine stump recently cut, that 
at first I thought the chopper had cut himself. 
The heart of the tree was partly decayed, and 
here and there the sounder parts were of this 
vermilion (?) color alternating with the ordinary 
white of the wood where it was apparently in 
the earlier stages of decay. The color was live- 
lier for being wet with the melting snow. 

Feb. 4, 1854. . . . We have not much that is 
poetic in the accompaniments of the farmer's 
life. Yarro speaks of the swineherd as accus- 
toming the swine or boars to come at the sound 
of a horn when he fed them with acorns. I re- 
member that my grandmother used to call her 
cow home at evening from a near pasture to be 
milked by thumping on the mortar which held 
her salt. The tinkling cow-bell cannot be spared. 
Even what most attracts us in the farmer's life 
is not its profitableness. We love to go after the 



WINTER. 337 

cow not for the sake of her milk or her beef, or 
the money they yield, but perchance to hear the 
tinkling of the cow -bell. . . . We would keep 
hens not for eggs, but to hear the cocks crow and 
the hens cackle. 

As for the locality of bee-hives, Yarro says 
they must be placed near the villa, " potissimum 
ubi non resonent imagines, hie enim sonus harum 
fugae causa existimatur esse," especially where 
there are 9o echoes, " for this sound is thought 
to be the cause of their flight." 

Feb. 4, 1855. . . . Saw this P. M. a very dis- 
tinct otter track by the Rock, at the junction of 
the two rivers. The separate foot tracks were 
quite round, more than two inches in diameter, 
showing the five toes distinctly in the snow, 
which was about half an inch deep. In one place 
where it had crossed last night to Merrick's pas- 
ture, its trail about six inches wide and of fur- 
rows in the snow was on one side of its foot 
tracks, and there were about nine inches between 
its fore and hind feet. Close by the great aspen 
I saw where it had entered or come out of the 
water under a shelf of ice left adhering to a 
maple. There it apparently played or slid on the 
level ice, making a broad trail, as if a shovel had 
been shoved along, just eight inches wide, without 
a foot track in it for four feet or more. And 
again the trail was only two inches wide and 



338 WINTER. 

between the foot tracks, which were side by side 
and twenty-two inches apart. . . . About the 
edge of the hole, where the snow was all rubbed 
off, was something white which looked and smelt 
exactly like bits of the skin of pouts or eels. 
Minott tells of one shot once while eating an eel. 

V saw one this winter in this town eating 

fish by a brook. . . . 

I sometimes hear a prominent, but dull-witted 
worthy man say, or hear that he has ^aid rarely, 
that if it were not for his firm belief in "an 
overruling power," or " a perfect Being," etc. 
But such poverty-stricken expressions only con- 
vince me of his habitual doubt, and that he 
is surprised into a transient belief. Such a 
man's expression of faith, moving solemnly in 
the traditional furrow, and casting out all free- 
thinking and living souls with the rusty mould- 
board of his compassion or contempt, thinking 
that he has Moses and all the prophets in his 
wake, discourages and saddens me as an ex- 
pression of his narrow and barren want of faith. 
I see that the infidels and skeptics have formed 
themselves into churches, and weekly gather to- 
gether at the ringing of a bell. Sometimes 
when in conversation or a lecture, I have been 
grasping at, or even standing and reclining upon 
the serene and everlasting truths that underlie 
and support our vacillating life, I have seen 



WINTER. 339 

my auditors standing on their terra firina, a 
quaking earth, crowded together on their Lisbon 
Quay, and compassionately or timidly watching 
my motions as if they were the antics of a rope- 
dancer or mountebank intendiug to walk on air. 

Feb. 4, 1858. p. m. To C. Miles swamp. 
Discover the ledum latifolium quite abundant 
on a space about six rods in diameter just E. of 
the small pond-hole, growing with the androm- 
eda calyculata, polifolia, kalmia giauca, etc. 
. . . The ledum bears a general resemblance to 
the water andromeda, with its dark-reddish, pur- 
plish, or rather mulberry leaves, reflexed ; but 
nearer, it is distinguished by its coarseness, the 
perfect tent form of its upper leaves, and the 
large, conspicuous, terminal, roundish (strictly 
oval) red buds, nearly as big as the swamp 
pink's, but rounded. The woolly stem for a 
couple of inches beneath the bud is frequently 
bare, and conspicuously club-shaped. The rust 
on the under sides of the leaves is of a lighter 
color than that of Maine. The seed vessels, 
which open at the base first, still hold on. The 
plant might be easily confounded with the water 
andromeda by a careless observer. . . . 

I brought some home, and had a cup of tea 
made of it, which, in spite of a slight piny or tur- 
pentine flavor, seemed unexpectedly good. . . . 
As usual with the finding of new plants, I had a 



340 WINTER. 

presentiment that I should find the ledum in 
Concord. It is a remarkable fact that in the 
case of the most interesting plants which I have 
discovered in this vicinity, I have anticipated 
finding them perhaps a year before the dis- 
covery. 

Feb. 5, 1841. . . . Music is the crystalliza- 
tion of sound. There is something in the effect 
of a harmonious voice upon the disposition of its 
neighborhood analogous to the law of crystals. 
It centralizes itself, and sounds like the pub- 
lished law of things. If the law of the universe 
were to be audibly promulgated, no mortal law- 
giver would suspect it, for it would be a finer 
melody than his ears ever attended to. It would 
be sphere music. . . . 

In all emergencies there is always one step 
which you may take on firm ground, where 
gravity will assure your footing. So you hold 
a draft on Fate payable at sight. 

Feb. 5, 1852. . . . Men do believe in sym- 
bols yet and can understand some. When Sir 
Francis Head left his government in Upper Can- 
ada, and the usual farewell had been said, as 
the vessel moved off, he, standing on the deck, 
pointed, for all reply, to the British flag floating 
over his head, and a shriek rather than a cheer 
went up from the crowd on the piers who had 
observed his gesture. . . . 



WINTER. 341 

Time never passes so rapidly and unaccount- 
ably as when I am engaged in recording my 
thoughts. The world may perchance reach its 
end for us in a profounder thought, and time 
itself run down. 

Feb. 5, 1853. ... The frost is out of the 
ground in many places. A stellaria media 
[common duckweed] in blossom in the garden, 
as was the case, of course, last month. 

Feb. 5, 1854. . . . Shall we not have sym- 
pathy with the muskrat, which gnaws its third 
leg off, not as pitying its suffering, but, through 
our kindred mortality, appreciating its majestic 
pains and its heroic virtue ? Are we not made 
its brothers by fate ? For whom are psalms sung 
and mass said, if not for such worthies as these ? 
When I hear the church organ peal, or feel the 
trembling tones of the bass-viol, I see in imag- 
ination the muskrat gnawing off his leg. I offer 
up a note that his affliction may be sanctified to 
each and all of us. . . . When I think of the 
tragedies which are constantly permitted in the 
course of all animal life, they make the plaintive 
strain of the universal harp which elevates us 
above the trivial. . . . Even as the worthies of 
mankind are said to recommend human life by 
having lived it, so I could not spare the example 
of the muskrat. 

Feb. 5, 1859. When we have experienced 



342 WINTER. 

many disappointments, such as the loss of friends, 
the notes of birds cease to affect us as they did. 

Feb. 6, 1841. One may discover a new side 
to his most intimate friend when for the first 
time he hears him speak in public. He will be 
strange to him as he is more familiar to the au- 
dience. The longest intimacy could not foretell 
how he would behave then. When I observe 
my friend's conduct toward others, then chiefly 
I learn the traits in his character, and in each 
case I am unprepared for the issue. . . . How 
little do we know each other. Who can tell how 
his friend would behave on any occasion. . . . 

What I am must make you forget what I 
wear. The fashionable world is content to be 
eclipsed by its dress, and never will bear the 
contrast. . . . 

Lu ral lu ral lu — may be more impressively 
sung than very respectable wisdom talked. It is 
well timed, as wisdom is not always. 

Feb. 6, 1852. . . . The artificial system has 
been very properly called the dictionary, and 
the natural method, the grammar of the science 
of botany, by botanists themselves. But are we 
to have nothing but grammars and dictionaries 
of this literature ? Are there no works written 
in the language of flowers ? I asked a learned 
and accurate naturalist, who is at the same time 
the courteous guardian of a public library, to 



WINTER. 343 

direct me to those works which contained the 
more . . . popular account or biography of par- 
ticular flowers from which the botanies I had 
met with appeared to draw sparingly, for I 
trusted that each flower had had many lovers 
and faithful describers in past times. But he in- 
formed me that I had read all, that no one was 
acquainted with them, they were only catalogued 
like his books. . . . 

Who will not confess that the necessity to get 
money has helped to ripen some of his schemes ? 

Feb. 6, 1853. Observed some buds on a young 
apple-tree partially unfolded at the extremity 
and apparently swollen. Probably blossom buds. 

Feb. 6, 1855. The coldest morning this win- 
ter. Our thermometer stands at — 14° at 9 A. M. 
Others, we hear, at 6 A. M. stood at — 18°. 
There are no loiterers in the street, and the 
wheels of wagons squeak as they have not for a 
long time, actually shriek. Frostwork keeps its 
place on the window within three feet of the 
stove all day in my chamber. At 4 p. M., the 
thermometer is at — 10°. At six it is at — 14°. 
I was walking at five, and found it stinging cold. 
. . . When I look out at the chimneys, I see 
that the cold and hungry air snaps up the smoke 
at once. The smoke is clear and light colored, 
and does not get far into the air before it is dis- 
sipated (?), condensed. The setting sun no 



344 WINTER. 

sooner leaves our west windows than a solid, but 
beautiful crystallization coats them, except, it 
may be, a triangularish bare spot at one corner 
which, perhaps, the sun has warmed and dried. 
... A solid, sparkling field m the midst of 
each pane, with broad, flowing sheaves surround- 
ing it. It has been a very mild as well as open 
winter up to this. At 9 o'clock p. M., thermom- 
eter at — 16°. They say it did not rise above 
—6° to-day. 

Feb. 7, 1853. The coldest night for a long, 
long time. Sheets froze stiff about the face. 
. . . People dreaded to go to bed. The ground 
cracked in the night as if a powder-mill had 
blown up, and the timbers of the house also. 
My pail of water was frozen in the morning so 
that I could not break it. . . . Iron was like 
fire in the hands. [Mercury ?] at about 7.30 
A. M. gone into the bulb of the thermometer 
— 19° at least. . . . Bread, meat, milk, cheese, 
etc., all frozen. . . . The inside of your cellar 
door all covered and sparkling with frost like 
Golconda. The latches are white with frost, and 
every nail-head in entries, etc., has a white head. 
. . . Neighbor Smith's thermometer stood at 
— 26° early this morning. But the day is at 
length more moderate than yesterday. . . . This 
will be remembered as the cold Tuesday. The 
old folks still refer to the cold Friday, when they 



WINTER. 345 

sat before great fires of wood four feet long, with 
a fence of blankets behind them, and water froze 
on the mantel-piece. 

Feb. 7, 1838. Zeno, the Stoic, stood in pre- 
cisely the same relation to the world that I do 
now. He is forsooth bred a merchant, as how 
many still, and can trade, and barter, and perhaps 
higgle, and moreover he can be shipwrecked and 
cast ashore at the Piraeus, like one of your 
Johns or Thomases. He strolls into a shop, 
and is charmed by a book, by Xenophon, and 
straightway he becomes a philosopher. The 
sim of a new life's day rises to him serene and 
unclouded, which looks over cn-oa. And still the 
fleshly Zeno sails on, shipwrecked, buffeted, 
tempest-tossed, but the true Zeno sails over a 
placid sea. Play high, play low, rain, sleet, or 
snow, it "s all the same with the stoic. . . . When 
evening comes, he sits down unwearied to the 
review of his day, what ? s done that 's to be un- 
done, what not done at all still to be done ; 
himself Truth's unconcerned helpmate. An- 
other system of book-keeping this, then, that the 
Cyprian trader to Phoenicia practiced. 

This was he who said to a certain garrulous 
young man, " On this account have we two ears 
and but one mouth, that we may hear more, and 
speak less." . . . The wisest may apologize that 
he only said so to hear himself talk, for if he 



346 WINTER. 

heard not, as well for him had he never spoken. 
What is all this gabble to the gabbler ? Only 
the silent reap the profit of it. 

Feb. 7, 1841. . . . There would be a new 
year's gift, indeed, if we would bestow on each 
other our sincerity. We should communicate 
our wealth, and not purchase that which does 
not belong to us, for a sign. Why give each 
other a sign to keep ? If we gave the thing 
itself, there would be no need of a sign. . . . 

The eaves are running on the south side of 
the house, the titmouse lisps in the poplar, the 
bells are ringing for church, while the sun pre- 
sides over all and makes his simple warmth 
more obvious than all else. What shall I do 
with the hour so like time and yet so fit for 
eternity? Where in me are these russet patches 
of ground, and scattered logs and chips in the 
yard ? I do not feel cluttered. — I have some 
notion what the Johns wort and life-everlasting 
may be thinking about when the sun shines on 
me as on them, and turns my prompt thought 
into just such a seething shimmer. I lie out as 
indistinct as a heath at noonday. I am evapo- 
rating and ascending into the sun. . . . 

The most I can do for my friend is simply to 
be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on 
him. If he knows that I am happy in loving 
him, he will want no other reward. Is not 
Friendship divine in this ? 



WINTER. 347 

I have myself to respect, but to myself I am 
not amiable ; but my friend is my amiableness 
personified. . . . 

The world has never learned what men can 
build each other up to be, when both master and 
pupil work in love. . . . 

Wait not till I invite thee, but observe that 
I am glad to see thee when thou comest. 

The most ardent lover holds yet a private 
court, and his love can never be so strong and 
ethereal that there will not be danger that 
judgment be rendered against the beloved. . . . 

So far as we respond to our ideal estimate of 
each other, do we have profitable intercourse. 

Feb. 7, 1857. Hayden, the elder, tells me 
that the quails have come to his yard every day 
for about a month, and are just as tame as 
chickens. They come about his wood shed, he 
supposes, to pick up the worms that have dropped 
out of the wood, and when it storms hard, gather 
together in a corner of the shed. He walks 
within about three or four feet of them without 
disturbing them. . . . They will be about his 
yard the greater part of the day; were there 
yesterday, though it was so warm, but now prob- 
ably can get food enough elsewhere. They go 
just the same to Poland's across the road. 
About ten years ago there was a bevy of fifteen 
that used to come from the same woods, and one 



348 WINTER. 

day they being in the barn and scared by the 
cat, four ran into the hay and died there. . . . 
Thus it seems in severe winters the quails ven- 
ture out of the woods, and join the poultry of 
the farmer's yard, if it be near the edge of the 
wood. It is remarkable that this bird, which 
thus half domesticates itself, should not be found 
wholly domesticated before this. 

Feb. 7, 1858. ... If possible, come upon 
the top of a hill unexpectedly, perhaps through 
woods, and then look off from it to the distant 
earth which lies behind a bluer veil, before you 
can see directly down it, i. e., bringing its own 
near top against the distant landscape. 

Feb. 7, 1859. Evidently the distant woods 
are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day 
in winter, and is not this connected with the 
blue in snow in similar days ? 

Going along the Nut Meadow on Jimmy Miles's 
road, when I see the sulphur lichens on the rails, 
brightening with the moisture, I feel like study- 
ing them again as a relisher and tonic, to make 
life go down and digest well, as we use pepper 
and vinegar and salads. They are a sort of 
winter green which we gather and assimilate 
with our eyes. That 's the true use of the study 
of lichens. I expect thus the lichenist will 
have the keenest relish for Nature in her every- 
day mood and dress. He will have the appetite 
of the worm that never dies, of the grub. To 



WINTER. 349 

study lichens is to get a taste of earth and 
health, to go gnawing the rails and rocks. This 
product of the bark is the essence of all tonics. 
The lichenist extracts nutriment from the very- 
crust of the earth. A taste for this study is an 
evidence of titanic health, a rare earthiness. It 
makes not so much blood as soil of life. It fits 
a man to deal with the barrenest and rockiest 
experience. A little moisture, a fog, or rain, or 
melted snow makes his wilderness to blossom 
like the rose. As some strong animal appetites, 
not satisfied with starch and muscle and fat, are 
fain to eat that which eats and digests the con- 
tents of the crop, the stomach and entrails 
themselves, so the lichenist loves the tripe of the 
rock, that which eats and digests the rocks. He 
eats the eater. Eat-all may be his name. A 
lichenist fattens where others starve. His prov- 
ender never fails. . . . There is no such colly- 
rium or salve for sore eyes as these brightening 
lichens on a moist day. Go bathe and screen your 
eyes with them in the softened light of the woods. 

Feb. 8, 1839. When the poetic frenzy seizes 
us, we run and scratch with our pen, delighting, 
like the cock, in the dust we make, but do not 
detect where the jewel lies which we have in the 
mean time cast to a distance, or quite covered 
up again. 

Feb. 8, 1841. All we have experienced is so 
much gone within us, and there lies. It is the 



350 WINTER. 

company we keep. One day, in health or sick- 
ness, it will come out and be remembered. 
Neither body nor soul forgets anything. The 
twig always remembers the wind that shook it, 
and the stone the cuff it received. Ask the old 
tree and the sand. . . . 

Are we not always in youth so long as we 
face heaven ? We may always live in the morn- 
ing of our days. To him who seeks early, the 
sun never gets over the edge of the horizon, but 
his rays fall slanting forever. . . . 

My journal is that of me which would else 
spill over and run to waste, gleanings from the 
field which in action I reap. I must not live 
for it, but, in it, for the gods. They are my 
correspondent to whom daily I send off this 
sheet, post-paid. I am clerk in their counting- 
room, and at evening transfer the account from 
day-book to ledger. It is a leaf which hangs 
over my head in the path. I bend the twig, 
and write my prayers on it ; then, letting it go, 
the bough springs up and shows the scrawl to 
heaven ; as if it were not kept shut in my desk, 
but were as public a leaf as any in nature. It 
is papyrus by the river side, it is vellum in the 
pastures, it is parchment on the hills. . . . Like 
the sere leaves in yonder vase, these have been 
gathered far and wide. Upland and lowland, 
forest and field, have been ransacked. 



WINTER. 351 

In our holiest moment, our devil with a leer 
stands close at hand. He is a very busy devil. 
. . . When I go forth with zeal to some good 
work, my devil is sure to get his robe tucked 
up the first, and arrives there as soon as T, with 
a look of sincere earnestness, which puts to 
shame my best intent. . . . He has a winning 
way of recommending himself by making him- 
self useful. How readily he comes into my best 
project, and does his work with a quiet and 
steady cheerfulness which even virtue may take 
pattern from. ... I never did a charitable 
thing, but there he stood, scarce in the rear, hat 
in hand, partner in the same errand, ready to 
share the smile of gratitude. Though I shut 
the door never so quick, and tell him to stay 
home like a good dog, he will out with me, for I 
shut in my own legs so, and he escapes in the 
mean while, and is ready to back and reinforce 
me in most virtuous deeds. If I turn and say, 
u Get thee behind me," he then indeed turns 
too, and takes the lead, though he seems to re- 
tire with a pensive and compassionate look, as 
much as to say, " Ye know not what ye do." 

Feb. 8, 1852. . . . Tuckerman says cunning- 
ly, " If the rapt admirer of the wonders and 
beauties of life and being might well come to 
learn of our knowledge the laws and the history 
of what he loves, let us remember that we have 



352 WINTER. 

the best right to all the pleasure that he has dis- 
covered, and that we are not complete if we do 
not possess it all. Linnaeus was as hearty a 
lover and admirer of nature, as if he had been 
nothing more." . . . 

Carried a new cloak to Johnny Eiorden. I 
found that the shanty was warmed by the simple 
social relations of the Irish. On Sunday they 
come from the town and stand in the doorway, 
and so keep out the cold. One is not cold 
among his brothers and sisters. What if there 
is less fire on the hearth, if there is more in the 
heart. These Irish are not succeeding so ill 
after all. The little boy goes to the primary 
school, and proves a foremost boy there, and the 
mother's brother, who has let himself in the vil- 
lage, tells me that he takes " The Flag of Our 
Union," if that is the paper edited by an Irishman. 
It is musical news that Johnny does not love to 
be kept at home from school in deep snows. 

Feb. 8, 1854. . . . Josselyn, speaking of crick- 
ets, says, "The Italian who hath them cryed 
up and down the streets ( G villi che cantano'), 
and buyeth them to put into his gardens, if he 
were in New England would gladly be rid of 
them, they make such a din in the evening." I 
am more charmed by the Italian's taste than by 
Josselyn's impatience. 

Feb. 8, 1857. Debauched and worn out 



WINTER. 353 

senses require the violent vibrations of an in- 
strument to excite them, but sound and still 
youthful senses, not enervated by luxury, hear 
music in the wind and rain and running water. 
One would think, from reading the critics, that 
music was intermittent, as a spring in the desert, 
dependent on some Paganini or Mozart, or 
heard only when the Pierians or Euterpeans 
drive through the villages, but music is perpet- 
ual, and only hearing is intermittent. I hear it 
in the softened air of these warm February days 
which have broken the back of the winter. „ . . 
Again and again I congratulate myself on my 
so-called poverty. I was almost disappointed 
yesterday to find thirty dollars in my desk which 
I did not know that I possessed, though now I 
should be sorry to lose them. The week that 
I go away to lecture is unspeakably cheapened. 
The preceding and succeeding days are a mere 
sloping down to and up from it. In the society 
of many men, or in the midst of what is called 
success, I find my life of no account, and my 
spirits rapidly fall. I would rather be the bar- 
renest pasture lying fallow than cursed with the 
compliments of kings, than be the sulphurous 
and accursed desert where Babylon once stood. 
But when I hear only the rustling oak leaf, or 
the faint metallic cheep of the tree sparrow, 
for variety in my winter walk, my life becomes 



354 WINTER. 

continent, and sweet as the kernel of a nut. 
I would rather hear a single shrub oak leaf 
at the end of a wintry glade rustle of its own 
accord at my approach than receive a ship-load 
of stars and garters from the strange kings and 
peoples of the earth. By poverty, i. e., sim- 
plicity of life and fewness of incidents, I am 
solidified and crystallized as a vapor or liquid by 
cold. It is a singular concentration of strength 
and energy and flavor. Chastity is perpetual 
acquaintance with the All. My diffuse and va- 
porous life becomes as the frost leaves and 
spiculse radiant as gems on the weeds and stub- 
ble in a winter morning. You think I am im- 
poverishing myself by withdrawing from men, 
but in my solitude I have woven for myself a 
silken web or chrysalis, and nymph-like shall 
erelong burst forth a more perfect creature, fitted 
for a higher society. . . . 

And now another friendship is ended. I do 
not know what has made my friend doubt me, 
but I know that in love there is no mistake, and 
that any estrangement is well-founded. But my 
destiny is not narrowed, rather, if possible, the 
broader for it. The heavens withdraw, and arch 
themselves higher. I am sensible not only of 
a moral, but even of a grand physical pain, such 
as gods may feel, about my head and breast, a 
certain ache and fullness. This rending of a 



WINTER. 355 

tie, it is not my work nor thine. It is no acci- 
dent that we may avoid, it is only the award of 
fate that is affecting us. I know of no aeons 
or periods, no life and death, but these meetings 
and separations. My life is like a stream that 
is suddenly dammed and has no outlet. But it 
rises higher up the hills that shut it in, and will 
become a deep and silent lake. Certainly there 
is no event comparable for grandeur with the 
eternal separation, if we may conceive it so, 
from a being that we have known. I become in 
a degree sensible of the meaning of finite and 
infinite. What a grand significance the word 
" never " acquires ! With one with whom we have 
walked on high ground, we cannot deal on any 
lower ground ever after. We have tried so many 
years to put each other to this immortal use, 
and have failed. Undoubtedly our good genii 
have mutually found the material unsuitable. 
We have hitherto paid each other the highest 
possible compliment, we have recognized each 
other constantly as divine, have afforded each 
other that opportunity to live that no other 
wealth or kindness can afford. And now for 
some reason inappreciable by us, it has become 
necessary for us to withhold this mutual aid. 
Perchance there is none beside who knows us 
for a god, and none whom we know for such. 
Each man and woman is a veritable god or god- 



1 



356 WINTER. 

dess, but to the mass of their fellows disguised. 
There is only one in each case who sees through 
the disguise. That one who does not stand so 
near to any man as to see the divinity in him is 
truly alone. I am perfectly sad at parting from 
you. I could better have the earth taken away 
from under my feet, than the thought of you 
from my mind. One while I think that some 
great injury has been done, with which you are 
implicated ; again, that you are no party to it. 
I fear that there may be incessant tragedies, that 
one may treat his fellow as a god, but receive 
somewhat less regard from him. I now almost 
for the first time fear this. Yet I believe that 
in the long run there is no such inequality. 

Feb. 8, 1860. 2 p. m. Up river to Fair Haven 
Hill. Thermometer 43°. . . . There is a pe- 
culiarity in the air when the temperature is thus 
high, and the weather fair at this season, which 
makes sounds more clear and pervading, as if 
they trusted themselves abroad farther in this 
genial state of the air. A different sound comes 
to my ear now from iron rails which are struck, 
from the cawing of crows, etc. Sound is not 
abrupt, piercing, or rending, but softly sweet 
and musical. There must be a still more genial 
and milder air before the bluebird's warble can 
be heard. 

Feb. 8, 1861. Coldest day yet. —22° at 



WINTER. 357 

least (all we can read), at 8 a. m., and so far 
as I can learn, not above — 6° all day. 

Feb. 9, 1838. It is wholesome advice " to be a \ 
man amongst folks." — Go into society, if you 
will, or if you are unwilling, and take a human 
interest in its affairs. If you mistake these 
Messieurs and Mesdames for so many men and 
women, it is but erring on the safe side, or 
rather it is their error and not yours. Armed 
with a manly sincerity, you shall not be trifled 
with, but drive this business of life. To manage 
the small talk of a party is to make an effort to 
do what was at first done admirably, because 
naturally, at your own fireside. 

Feb. 9, 1841. . . . 

" Whoe'er is raised 
For -wealth he has not, he is taxed, not praised," 

says Jon son. If you mind the flatterer, you rob __ 
yourself, and still cheat him. The fates never 
exaggerate. Men pass for what they arej\ The 
state never fails to get a revenue out of you 
without a direct tax. What I am praised for \ 
which I have not, I put to the account of the 
gods. It needs a skillful eye to distinguish 
between their coin and my own. However, there 
can be no loss either way. For what meed I 
have earned is equally theirs. Let neither fame 
nor infamy hit you, but one go as far beyond 
as the other falls behind. Let the one glance 



358 WINTER. 

past you to the gods, and the other wallow where 
it was engendered. The home thrusts are at hel- 
mets upon blocks, and my worst foes but stab an 
armor through. 

My life at this moment is like a summer morn- 
ing when birds are singing. Yet that is false, 
for nature's is an idle pleasure in comparison. 
My hour has a more solid serenity. 

I have been breaking silence these twenty- 
three years, and have hardly made a rent in it. 
Silence has no end. Speech is but the begin- 
ning of it. My friend thinks I keep silence 
who am only choked with letting it out so fast. 
Does he forget that new mines of secrecy are 
constantly opening in me ? . . . 

When your host shuts his door on you, he 
incloses you in the dwelling of nature. He 
thrusts you over the threshold of the world. My 
foes restore me to my friends. — I might say 
friendship had no ears, as love has no eyes, for 
no word is evidence in its court. The least act 
fulfills more than all words profess. The most 
gracious speech is but partial kindness, but the 
smallest genuine deed takes the whole man. If 
we had waited till doomsday, it could never 
have been uttered. 

Feb. 9, 1852. I am interested to see the 
seeds of the poke, about a dozen, shiny, black, 
with a white spot, somewhat like a saba bean in 
shape, the still full granary of the birds. 



WINTER. 359 

9 A. M. Up river to Fair Haven Pond. . . . 

Met on the river, . . . fishing, wearing an 

old coat much patched with many colors. He 
represents the Indian still. The very patches 
on his coat and his improvident life do so. I 
feel that he is as essential a part, nevertheless, 
of our community as the lawyer in the village. 
He tells me that he caught three pickerel here 
the other day that weighed seven pounds all to- 
gether. It is the old story. The fisherman is a 
natural story-teller. No man's imagination plays 
more pranks than his, while he is tending his 
reels, and trotting from one to another, or watch- 
ing his cork in summer. He is ever waiting for 
the sky to fall. He has sent out a venture. He 
has a ticket in the lottery of fate, and who 
knows what it may draw. He ever expects to 
catch a bigger fish yet. He is the most patient 
and believing of men. Who else will stand so 
long in wet places ? When the hay-maker runs 
to shelter, he takes down his pole, and bends 
his steps to the river, glad to have a leisure day. 
. . . He is more like an inhabitant of nature. . . . 

Men tell about the mirage to be seen in cer- 
tain deserts, and in peculiar states of the atmos- 
phere. The mirage is constant. The state of 
the atmosphere is continually varying, and to 
a keen observer objects do not twice present ex- 
actly the same appearance. If I invert my head 



360 WINTER. 

this morning and look at the woods in the 
horizon, they do not look so far off and elysian- 
like as in the afternoon. If I mistake not, it is 
late in the afternoon when the atmosphere is in 
such a state that we derive the most pleasure 
from and are most surprised by this experiment. 
The prospect is thus a constantly varying mirage 
answering to the condition of our perceptive fac- 
ulties and our fluctuating imagination. If we 
incline our heads never so little, the most famil- 
iar things begin to put on some new aspect. If 
we invert our heads completely, our desecrated 
wood-lot appears far off, incredible, elysian, un- 
profaned by us. As you cannot swear through 
glass, no more can you swear through air, the 
thinnest section of it. . . . When was not the 
air as elastic as our spirits. ... It is a new 
glass placed over the picture every hour. . . . 

When I break off a twig of green-barked 
sassafras, as I am going through the woods now, 
and smell it, I am startled to find it fragrant 
as in summer. It is an importation of all the 
spices of Oriental summers into our New England 
winter, very foreign to the snow and the oak 
leaves. 

Feb. 9, 1853. . . . Saw the grisly bear near the 
Haymarket [Boston] to-day, said (?) to weigh 
nineteen hundred pounds ; apparently too much. 
He looked four feet and a few inches in height 



WINTER. 361 

by as much in length, not including his great 
head and his tail, which was invisible. He 
looked gentle, and continually sucked his claws, 
and cleaned between them with his tongue. 
Small eyes and funny little ears. Perfectly bear- 
ish, with a strong wild beast scent ; fed on Indian 
meal and water. Hind paws a foot long. Ly- 
ing down with his feet up against the bars ; often 
sitting up in the corner on his hind quarters. 

Feb. 9, 1855. Snowed harder in the night, 
and blew considerably. ... I was so sure this 
storm would bring snowbirds that I went to the 
window at ten to look for them, and there they 
were. Also, a downy woodpecker (perhaps a 
hairy) flitted high across the street to an elm 
in front of the house, and commenced assidu- 
ously tapping, his head going like a hammer. 

Feb. 9, 1858. . . . Saw, at Simon Brown's, a 
sketch, apparently made with a pen, on which 
was written, " Concord Jail, near Boston, Amer- 
ica," and on a fresher piece of paper, on which 
the above was pasted, was written, " The jail in 

which General Sir Arch ld Campbell and 

Wilson were confined when taken off Boston in 
America by a French Privateer." A letter on 
the back side from Mr. Lewis of Framingham 
to Mr. Brown stated that Mr. Lewis had re- 
ceived the sketch from a grandson of Wilson 
who drew it. — You are supposed to be in the 



362 WINTER. 

jail yard, or close to it westward, and see the old 
jail, gambrel-roofed, the old Hurd house (partly) 
west of the grave-yard, the grave-yard and Dr. 
Hurd house, and over the last, and to the north 
of it, a wooded hill, apparently Windmill Hill. 
Just north of the Hurd house, beyond it, appar- 
ently the Court-house and School-house, both 
with belfries, also the road to the battle ground, 
and a distant farmhouse on a hill, French's or 
Buttrick's, perhaps. 

Feb. 10, 1841. . . . Our thoughts and actions 
may be very private for a long time, for they 
demand a more catholic publicity to be dis- 
played in than the world can afford. Our best 
deeds shun the narrow walks of men, and are 
not ambitious of the faint light the world can 
shed on them, but delight to unfold themselves 
in that public ground between God and con- 
science. . . . Within, where I resolve and deal 
with principles, there is more space and room 
than anywhere without where my hands execute. 
Men should hear of your virtue only as they 
hear the creaking of the earth's axle and the 
music of the spheres. It will fall into the 
course of nature, and be effectually concealed by 
publicness. 

Feb. 10, 1852. Now if there are any who 
think I am vainglorious, that I set myself up 
above others, and crow over their low estate, 



WINTER. 363 

let me say that I could tell a pitiful story re- 
specting myself as well as them, if my spirits 
held out to do it. I could encourage them with 
a sufficient list of failures, and could flow as 
humbly as the very gutters themselves. ... I 
think worse of myself than they can possibly 
think of me, being better acquainted with the 
man. I put the best face on the matter. I will 
tell them this secret, if they will not tell it to 
anybody else. 

/ Write while the heat is in you. When the 
farmer burns a hole in his yoke, he carries the 
iron quickly from the fire to the wood, for every 
moment it is less effectual to penetrate it. . . . 
The writer who postpones the recording of his 
thoughts, uses an iron which has cooled to burn 
a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of 
his audience. . . . 

I saw yesterday in the snow on the ice on the 
S. side of Fair Haven Pond some hundreds of 
honey bees dead and sunk half an inch be- 
low the crust. They had evidently come forth 
from their hive, perhaps in a large hemlock on 
the bank close by, and had fallen on the snow, 
chilled to death. Their bodies extended about 
three rods from the tree toward the pond. 

Feb. 10, 1854. ... I observe the great, well- 
protected buds of the balm of Gilead, spear- 
head-like. There is no shine upon them now, 



364 WINTER. 

and their viscidness is not very apparent. A 
great many willow catkins show a little down 
peeping from under the points of the scales, but 
I have no doubt that all this was done last fall. 
I noticed it then. 

Feb. 10, 1855. ... I hear the faint metallic 
chirp of a tree sparrow in the yard from time to 
time, or perchance the mew of a linaria. It is 
worth while to let some pigweed grow in your 
garden, if only to attract these winter visitors. 
It would be a pity to have these weeds burned 
in the fall. Of the former, I see in the winter 
but three or four commonly at a time ; of the 
latter, large flocks. This is in or after consider- 
able snow-storms. 

Feb. 10, 1856. . . . p. m. To Walden. Re- 
turning I saw a fox on the railroad, . . . eight 
or nine rods from me. He looked of a dirty 
yellow, and lean. I did not notice the white tip 
to his tail. Seeing me, he pricked up his ears, 
and at first ran up and along the E. bank on the 
crust, then changed his mind, and came down 
the steep bank, crossed the railroad before me, 
and gliding up the west bank, disappeared in 
the woods. He coursed or glided along easily, 
appearing not to lift his feet high, leaping over 
obstacles with his tail extended straight behind. 
He leaped over the ridge of snow about two 
feet high and three wide between the tracks, 



WINTER. 365 

very gracefully. I followed examining his 
tracks. There was about a quarter of an inch 
of recent snow above the crust, but for the most 
part he broke in two or three inches. I slumped 
from one to three feet. . . . He went off at an 
easy gliding pace such as he might keep up for 
a long time, pretty direct after his first turn- 
ing. 

Feb. 10, 1857. . . . Burton, the traveler, quotes 
an Arab saying, " Voyaging is a victory," which 
he refers to the feeling of independence on over- 
coming the difficulties and dangers of the des- 
ert. But I think that commonly voyaging is a 
defeat, a rout to which the traveler is compelled 
by want of valor. The traveler's peculiar valor 
is commonly a bill of exchange. He is at home 
anywhere but where he was born and bred, 
petitioning some Sir Joseph Banks or other rep- 
resentative of a Geographical Society to avail 
himself of his restlessness, and if not receiving 
a favorable answer, necessarily going off some- 
where next morning. It is a prevalent disease 
which attacks Americans especially, both men 
and women, the opposite to nostalgia. Yet it 
does not differ much from nostalgia. I read 
the story of one voyager round the world, who 
it seemed to me, having started, had no other 
object but to get home again, only she took the 
longest way round. The traveler, fitted out by 



366 WINTER. 

some Sir Joseph Banks, snatches at a fact or 
two in behalf of science, as he goes, just as a 
panther in his leap will take off a man's sleeve, 
and land twenty feet beyond him, when travel- 
ing down hill. 

Feb. 10, 1860. . . . The river where open is 
very black, as usual, when the waves run high, 
for each wave casts a shadow. Theophrastus 
notices that the roughened water is black, and 
says it is because fewer rays fall on it, and the 
light is dissipated. . . . 

I do not know of any more exhilarating walk- 
ing than up or down a broad field of smooth ice 
like this in a cold, glittering, winter day, when 
your rubbers give you a firm hold on the ice. 

Feb. 11, 1841. True help, for the most part, 
implies a greatness in him who is to be helped as 
well as in the helper. It takes a god to be helped 
even. A great person, though unconsciously, 
will constantly give you great opportunities to 
serve him, but a mean one will quite preclude 
all active benevolence. It needs but simply and 
greatly to want it for once, that all true men 
may contend who shall be foremost to render 
aid. My neighbor's state must pray to heaven 
so devoutly, yet disinterestedly, as he never 
prayed in words, before my ears can hear. It 
must ask divinely. But men so cobble and 
botch their request that you must stoop as low 



WINTER. 367 

as they to give them aid. Their meanness would 
drag down your deed to be a compromise with 
conscience, and not leave it to be done on the 
high table-land of the benevolent soul. . . . But 
if I am to serve them, I must not serve the 
devil. . . . We go about mending the times 
when we should be building the eternity. 

Feb. 11, 1852. ... I have lived some thirty 
odd years on this planet, and I have yet to hear 
the first syllable of valuable or even earnest ad- 
vice from my seniors. They have told me noth- 
ing, and probably can tell me nothing, to the 
purpose. There is life, an experiment untried 
by me, and it does not avail me that you have 
tried it. If I have any valuable experience I 
am sure to reflect that this my mentors said 
nothing about. What were mysteries to the 
child remain mysteries to the old man. J 

It is a mistake to suppose that in a country 
where railroads and steamboats and the print- 
ing press and the church, where the usual evi- 
dences of civilization exist, the condition of a 
very large body of the inhabitants may not be 
as degraded as that of savages. ... To know 
this, I should not need to look farther than to 
the shanties which everywhere line our railroads, 
that last improvement in civilization. But I 
will refer you to Ireland, which is marked as one 
of the white, or enlightened spots on the map. 



368 WINTER. 

Yet I have no doubt that that nation's rulers are 
as wise as the average of civilized rulers. 

Feb. 12. Living all winter with an open door 
for light, and no visible wood -pile, the forms 
of old and young are permanently contracted 
through long shrinking from cold, and their 
faces pinched by want. I have seen an old 
crone sitting bare-headed on the hillside in the 
middle of January, while it was raining, and the 
ground was slowly thawing under her, knitting 
there. . . . There is no greater squalidness in 
any part of the world. Contrast the condition 
of these Irish with that of the North American 
Indian, or the South Sea Islander, or any other 
savage race before they are degraded by contact 
with civilized man. 

Feb. 11, 1853. . . . While surveying on the 
Hunt farm the other day, behind Simon Brown's 
house, I heard a remarkable echo. In the 
course of surveying, being obliged to call aloud 
to my assistant from every side and almost every 
part of a farm in succession and at various 
hours of a day, I am pretty sure to discover an 
echo, if any exists. That day it was encouraging 
and soothing to hear one. After so many days 
of comparatively insignificant drudgery with 
stupid companions, this leisure, this sportiveness, 
this generosity in nature, sympathizing with the 
better part of me, somebody I could talk with, 



WINTER. 369 

one degree at least better than talking with one's 
self. Ah, Simon Brown's premises harbor a 
hired man and a hired maid he wots not of ; 
some voice of somebody I pined to hear, with 
whom I could form a community. I did wish 
rather to linger there and call all day to the air, 
and hear my words repeated, but a vulgar neces- 
sity dragged me along round the bounds of the 
farm to hear only the stale answers of my chain- 
man shouted back to me. . . . Has it to do with 
the season of the year ? I have since heard an 
echo on Moore's farm. 

It was the memorable event of the day, that 
echo I heard, not anything my companions 
said, or the travelers I met, or my thoughts, for 
they were all mere repetitions or echoes in the 
worst sense of what I had heard and thought 
before many times, but this echo was accompa- 
nied with novelty, and by its repetition of my 
voice it did more than double that. It was 
a profounder Socratic method of suggesting 
thoughts unutterable to me the speaker. Here 
was one I heartily love to talk with. Under 
such favorable auspices, I could converse with 
myself, could reflect. The hour, the atmosphere, 
and the conformation of the ground permitted it. 

Feb. 11, 1854. 7.30 a. m. Snow fleas lie in 
black patches like some of those dark, rough 
lichens on rocks, or like ink spots three or four 



370 WINTER. 

inches in diameter, about the grass stems or 
willows, on the ice which froze last night. 
When I breathe on them, I find them all alive 
and ready to skip. Also the water, when I 
break the ice, arouses them. 

I saw yesterday in a muddy spring in Tarbell's 
meadow many cockle shells on the bottom, with 
their feet out, and marks as if they had been 
moving. 

When I read of the catkins of the alder and 
the willow, etc., scattering their yellow pollen, 
they impress me as a vegetation which belongs 
to the earliest and most innocent dawn of nature, 
as if they must have preceded other trees in the 
order of creation, as they precede them annually 
in their blossoming and leafing. . . . For how 
many aeons did the willow shed its yellow pollen 
annually before man was created ! 

In the winter we so value the semblance of 
fruit that even the dry, black female catkins of 
the alder are an interesting sight, not to men- 
tion, on shoots rising a foot or two above these, 
the red or mulberry male catkins in little par- 
cels dangling at a less than right angle with the 
stems, and the short female ones at their bases. 

Apparently I read Cato and Yarro from the 
same motives that Virgil did, and as I read the 
almanac, the " N. E. Farmer," or " Cultivator," 
or Howitt's " Seasons." 



WINTER. 371 

Feb. 11, 1856. . . . Saw a partridge by the 
river side . . . which at first I mistook for the 
top of a fence post above the snow amid some 
alders. I shouted and waved my hand four 
rods off to see if it was one, but there was no 
motion, and I thought surely it must be a post. 
Nevertheless I resolved to investigate. Within 
three rods I saw to my surprise that it was in- 
deed a partridge, standing perfectly still, with its 
head erect and neck stretched upward. It was 
as complete a deception as if it had designedly 
placed itself on the line of the fence and in the 
proper place for a post. It finally stepped off 
daintily with a teetering gait and head up, and 
took to wing. 

Feb. 11, 1859. . . . Now, as after a freshet 
in cold weather, the ice which had formed 
around and frozen to the trees and bushes along 
the shore, settling, draws them down to the 
ground or water, after breaking them exten- 
sively. It reminds you of an alligator or other 
evil genius of the river pulling the trees and 
bushes, which had come to drink, into the water. 
If a maple or alder is unfortunate enough to 
slip its lower limbs into the freshet, dallying 
with it, their fate is sealed, for the water freez- 
ing that night takes fast hold of them like a 
vise, and when the water runs out from beneath, 
an irresistible weight brings them down to the 



372 WINTER. 

ground and holds them there. Only the spring 
sun will soften the heart of this relentless mon- 
ster when commonly it is too late. 

Feb. 12, 1840. . . . Knavery is more foolish 
than folly, since, half knowing its own foolish- 
ness, it still persists. The knave has reduced 
folly to a system, is the prudent, common-sense 
fool. 

Feb. 12, 1851. ... I find that it is an ex- 
cellent walk for variety and novelty and wild- 
ness to keep round the edge of the meadow. 
The ice not being strong enough to bear, and 
transparent as water, on the bare ground or snow 
just between the highest water mark and the pres- 
ent water line is a narrow, meandering walk rich 
in unexpected views and objects. The line of 
rubbish which marks the higher tides, withered 
flags and seeds and twigs and cranberries, is to 
my eyes a very agreeable and significant line 
which nature traces along the edge of the mead- 
ows. It is a strongly marked, enduring, natural 
line which in summer reminds me that the water 
has once stood over where I walk. Sometimes 
the grooved trees tell the same tale. The wrecks 
of the meadow fill a thousand coves, and tell 
a thousand tales to those who can read them; 
our prairial, mediterranean shore. ... If you 
cannot go on the ice, you are then gently com- 
pelled to take this course, which is, on the whole, 



WINTER. 373 

more beautiful, to follow the sinuosities of the 
meadow. 

Feb. 12, 1854. . . . p. m. Skate to Pantry 
Brook. . . . One accustomed to glide over a 
boundless and variegated ice floor like this can- 
not be much attracted by tessellated floors and 
mosaic work. I skate over a thin ice all tessel- 
lated, so to speak, or on which you see the forms 
of the crystals as they shoot. ... To make a 
perfect winter day like this, you must have a 
clear, sparkling air, with a sheen from the snow, 
sufficient cold, no wind, and the warmth must 
come directly from the sun. It must not be a 
thawing warmth. The tension of nature must 
not be relaxed. The earth must be resonant, if 
bare. You hear the lisping music of chickadees 
from time to time, and the unrelenting steel-cold 
scream of a jay, unmelted, that never flows into 
a song, a sort of wintry trumpet, screaming 
cold, hard, tense, frozen music like the winter 
sky itself. . . . There is no hint of incubation 
in the jay's scream. There is no cushion for 
sound now. It tears our ears. 

I frequently see three or four old white 
birches standing together on the edge of a pond 
or meadow, and am struck by the pleasing man- 
ner in which they will commonly be grouped, 
how they spread so as to make room for each 
other, and make an agreeable impression upon 



374 WINTER. 

the eye. Methinks I have seen groups of three 
in different places arranged almost exactly 
alike. 

Returning I overhauled a muskrat's house by 
Bidens Brook. For want of other material it 
was composed of grass flags, and in a great 
measure (one half ) of twigs and sticks, mostly 
sweet-gale, both dead and alive, and roots, from 
six inches to two feet in length. These were in 
fact the principal material of it, and it was a 
large one, two feet above the ice. I was sur- 
prised to find that these sticks, both green and 
dead, had the greater part of them been gnawed 
off by the rat, and some were nearly half an inch 
in diameter. They were cut off not at a right 
angle, with a smooth cut, but by successive cuts, 
smooth as with a knife, the twig being at the 
same time bent down, which produced a sloping, 
and, so to speak, terraced surface. I did not 
know before that the muskrat resembled the 
beaver in this respect also. It was chiefly tbe 
sweet-gale thus cut, commonly the top left on 
two feet long, but sometimes cut off six inches 
long. 

I see, as I skate, reflected from the surface 
of the ice, flakes of rainbow, somewhat like 
cobwebs, where the great slopes of the crystalliz- 
ation fall at the right angle, six inches or a foot 
across, but at so small an angle with the horizon 



WINTER. 375 

that they had seemed absolutely flat and level 
before. Think of this kind of mosaic and 
tessellation for your floor, composed of crystals 
variously set, made up of surfaces not absolutely 
level, though level to the touch of the feet and 
to the noonday eye, but just enough inclined to 
reflect the colors of the rainbow when the sun 
gets low. 

Feb. 12, 1857. 7.30 a. m. The caterpillar 
which I placed last night on the snow beneath 
the thermometer is frozen stiff again, this time 
not being curled up, the temperature being — 6° 
now. Yet being placed on the mantel-piece, it 
thaws and begins to crawl in five or ten minutes, 
before the rear part of its body is limber. Per- 
haps they were revived last week when the ther- 
mometer stood at 52° and 53°. 

Feb. 12, 1860. 2 p. m. 22°. Walk up river 
to Fair Haven Pond. Clear and windy. . . . 
In this cold, clear, rough air from the N. W. we 
walk amid what simple surroundings, surrounded 
by our thoughts or imaginary objects. . . . 
Above me is a cloudless blue sky, beneath is the 
sky blue, i. e., sky-reflecting ice, with patches of 
snow scattered over it like mackerel clouds. 
At a distance in several directions I see the 
tawny earth streaked or spotted with white, 
where the bank, or hills and fields appear, or 
the green-black, evergreen forests, or the brown, 



376 WINTER. 

or russet, or tawny deciduous woods, and here 
and there, where the agitated surface of the river 
is exposed, the blue-black water. That dark- 
eyed water, especially where I see it at right 
angles with the direction of the sun, is it not the 
first sign of spring ? How its darkness contrasts 
with the general lightness of the winter ! It 
has more life in it than any part of the earth's 
surface. It is where one of the arteries of the 
earth is palpable, visible. In winter not only 
some creatures, but the very earth is partially 
dormant. Vegetation ceases, and rivers, to some 
extent, cease to flow. Therefore when I see the 
water exposed in mid -winter, it is as if I saw a 
skunk or even a striped squirrel out. It is as if 
the woodchuck consoled himself, and snuffed the 
air to see if it were warm enough to be trusted. 
It excites me to see early in the spring that 
black artery leaping once more through the snow- 
clad town. All is tumult and life there. . . . 
Where this artery is shallowest, i, e., comes near- 
est to the surface and runs swiftest, there it 
shows itself soonest, and you may see its pulse 
beat. There are the wrists, temples of the earth 
where I feel its pulse with my eye. The living 
waters, not the dead earth. . . . Returning just 
before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be 
green, and a rose color to be reflected from the 
low snow patches. I see the color from the 



WINTER. 377 

snow first where there is some shade, as where 
the shadow of a maple falls afar over the ice 
and snow. From this is reflected a purple tinge 
when I see none elsewhere. Some shadow or 
twilight then is necessary, umbra mixed with 
the reflected sun. Off Holden wood where the 
low rays fall on the river through the fringe of 
the wood, the patches are not rose color, but a 
very dark purple, like a grape, and thus there 
are all degrees from pure white to black. As I 
cross Hubbard's broad meadow, the snow patches 
are a most beautiful crystalline purple, like the 
petals of some flowers, or as if tinged with cran- 
berry juice. . . . 

I walk over a smooth green sea or aequor, 
the sun just disappearing in the cloudless hori- 
zon, amid thousands of these flat isles as purple 
as the petals of a flower. It would not be more 
enchanting to walk amid the purple clouds of 
the sunset sky. And, by the way, this is but a 
sunset sky under our feet, produced by the same 
law, the same slanting rays and twilight. Here 
the clouds are these patches of snow or frozen 
vapor, and the ice is the greenish sky between 
them. Thus all of heaven is realized on earth. 
You have seen those purple, fortunate isles in 
the sunset heavens, and that green and amber 
sky between them. Would you believe that you 
could ever walk amid those isles ? You can on 



378 WINTER. 

many a winter evening. I have done so a hun- 
dred times. 

Thus the sky and the earth sympathize, and 
are subject to the same laws, and in the horizon 
they, as it were, meet and are seen to be 
one. . . . 

We have such a habit of looking away that 
we see not what is around us. How few are 
aware that in winter, when the earth is covered 
with snow and ice, the phenomenon of the sunset 
sky is double. The one is on the earth around 
us, the other in the horizon. 

Feb. 18, 1838. It is hard to subject ourselves 
to an influence. It must steal upon us when we 
expect it not, and its work be all done ere we 
are aware of it. If we make advances, it is shy ; 
if, when we feel its presence, we presume to pry 
into its freemasonry, it vanishes, and leaves us 
alone in our folly. 

All fear of the world or consequences is 
swallowed up in a manly anxiety to do truth 
justice. 

Feb. 13, 1840. An act of integrity is to an act 
of duty what the French verb etre is to devoir. 
Duty is that which devrait etre. Duty belongs 
to the understanding, but genius is not dutiful. 
. . . The perfect man has both genius and 
talent ; the one is his head, the other, his foot. 
By one, he is ; by the other, he lives. 



WINTER. 379 

The consciousness of man is the consciousness 
of God, the end of the world. 

The very thrills of genius are disorganizing. 
The body is never quite acclimated to its atmos- 
phere, but how often succumbs, and goes into a 
decline. 

Feb, 13, 1841. By the truthfulness of our 
story to-day, we help explain ourselves for all 
our life henceforth. How we hamper and belay 
ourselves by the least exaggeration. The truth 
is God's concern ; he will sustain it. But who 
can afford to maintain a lie ? We have taken 
away one of the pillars of Hercules, and must 
support the world on our shoulders, who might 
have walked freely upon it. 

Feb. 13, 1851. Skated to Sudbury. A beau- 
tiful summer-like day. The meadows were 
frozen just enough to bear. Examined now the 
fleets of ice flakes close at hand. They are a 
very singular and interesting phenomenon which 
I do not remember to have seen. I should say 
that when the water was frozen about as thick 
as pasteboard, a violent gust had here and there 
broken it up, and while the wind and waves held 
it on its edge, the increasing cold froze it in 
firmly. So it seemed, for the flakes were, for 
the most part, turned one way, i. e., standing on 
one side, you saw only their edges, on another, 
the N. E. or S. W., their sides. They were com- 



380 WINTER. 

monly of a triangular form, like a shoulder-of- 
mutton (?) sail, slightly scalloped, like shells. 
They looked like a fleet of a thousand mackerel 
fishers under a press of sail, careering before a 
smacking breeze. Sometimes the sun and wind 
had reduced them to the thinness of writing 
paper, and they fluttered and rustled and tin- 
kled merrily. I skated through them and scat- 
tered their wrecks around. Every half mile or 
mile, as you skate up the river, you see these 
crystal fleets. . . . 

Again I saw to-day half a mile off in Sud- 
bury a sandy spot on the top of a hill, where I 
prophesied that I should find traces of the In- 
dians. When within a dozen rods, I distin- 
guished the foundation of a lodge, and merely 
passing over it, I saw many fragments of the 
arrowhead stone. I have frequently distinguished 
these localities half a mile off, gone forward, and 
picked up arrowheads. 

Saw in a warm, muddy brook in Sudbury, 
quite open and exposed, the skunk - cabbage 
spathes above water. The tops of the spathes 
were frost-bitten, but the fruit sound. There 
was one partly expanded, the first flower of the 
season, for it is a flower. I doubt if there is a 
month without its flower. . . . 

In society, in the best institutions of men, I 
remark a certain precocity. When we should 



WINTER. 381 

be growing children, we are already little men. 
Infants as we are, we make haste to be weaned 
from our great mother's breast, and cultivate our 
parts by intercourse with one another. ... I 
would not have every man, nor every part of a 
man, cultivated any more than I would have 
every acre of earth cultivated. Some must be 
preparing a mould by the annual decay of the 
forests which they sustain. 

Feb. 13, 1852. Color, which is the poet's 
wealth, is so expensive, that most take to mere 
outline or pencil sketches, and become men of 
science. 

Feb. 13, 1855. . . . The tracks of partridges 
are more remarkable in this snow than usual, 
it is so light, being, at the same time, a foot 
deep. ... I see where many have dived into 
the snow, apparently last night, on the side of a 
shrub oak hollow. In four places they have 
passed quite underneath it for more than a 
foot ; in one place, eighteen inches. They ap- 
pear to have dived or burrowed into it, then 
passed along a foot or more underneath, and 
squatted there, perhaps with their heads out. 
... I scared one from its hole only half a rod 
in front of me, now at 11 A. M. ... It is evi- 
dently a hardy bird, and in the above respects, 
too, is like the rabbit, which squats under a brake 
or bush in the snow. I see the traces of the 



382 WINTER. 

latter in hollows in the snow in such places, their 
forms. . . . 

One of these pigweeds in the yard lasts the 
snowbirds all winter. After every snow-storm, 
they revisit it. How inexhaustible their granary. 

To resume the subject of partridges, looking 
farther in an open place . . . amid the shrub 
oaks and low pitch pines, I found as many as 
twenty or thirty places where partridges had 
lodged in the snow apparently the last night or 
the night before. You could see commonly 
where their bodies had first struck the snow, and 
furrowed it for a foot or two, twenty-six inches 
wide, then entered and gone underneath two 
feet, and rested at the farther end. ... Is it 
not likely that they remain quite under the 
snow there, and do not put their heads out till 
ready to start? They do not go under deep, 
and the gallery they make is mostly filled up 
behind them, leaving only a thin crust above. 
Then invariably just beyond this resting place, 
you could see the marks made by their wings 
when they took their departure. These distinct 
impressions made by their wings on the pure 
snow, so common on all hands, though the bird 
that made it is gone, and there is no trace 
beyond, affect me like some mystic Oriental sym- 
bol, the winged globe or what not, as if made by 
a spirit. In some places you would see a furrow 



WINTER. 383 

and hollow in the snow where there was no 
track for rods around, as if a large snow-ball or 
cannon-ball had struck it, where apparently the 
birds had not paused in their flight. It is evi- 
dently a regular thing with them thus to lodge 
in the snow. 

Feb. 13, 1859. p. m. On ice to Fair Haven 
Pond. . . . The yellowish ice which froze yes- 
terday and last night is thickly and evenly 
strewn with fibrous frost crystals very much like 
bits of asbestos, an inch or more long, sometimes 
arranged like a star or rosette, one for every 
inch or two. ... I think this is the vapor from 
the water which found its way up through the 
ice, and froze in the night. It is sprinkled like 
some kind of grain, and is in certain places 
much more thickly strewn, as where a little snow 
shows itself above the ice. — The old ice is cov- 
ered with a dry, powdery snow about one inch 
deep, from which as I walk toward the sun, this 
perfectly clear, bright afternoon at half -past 
three o'clock, the colors of the rainbow are re- 
flected from a myriad fine facets. It is as if 
the dust of diamonds and other precious stones 
were spread all around. The blue and red pre- 
dominate. Though I distinguish these colors 
everywhere toward the sun, they are so much 
more abundantly reflected to me from two direc- 
tions that I see two distinct rays or arms, so to 



384 WINTER. 

call them, of this rainbow-like dust stretching 
away from me and about half a dozen feet wide, 
the two arms including an angle of about 60°. 
When I look from the sun, I see merely daz- 
zling white points. I can easily see some of these 
dazzling grains fifteen or twenty rods distant on 
any side, though the facet which reflects the 
light cannot be more than a tenth or twelfth of 
an inch at most. Yet I might easily, and com- 
monly do, overlook all this. 

Winter comes to make walking possible where 
there was no walking in summer. Not till win- 
ter can we take possession of the whole of our 
territory. I have three great highways raying 
out from one centre which is near my door. I 
may walk down the main river, or up either of 
its two branches. Could any avenues be con- 
trived more convenient ? With the river I am 
not compelled to walk in the tracks of horses. 

Never is there so much light in the air as in 
one of these bright winter afternoons when all 
the earth is covered with new-fallen snow, and 
there is not a cloud in the sky. The sky is 
much the darkest side, like the bluish lining of 
an egg - shell. With this white earth beneath, 
and that spotless, skimmed-milk sky above him, 
man is but a black speck inclosed in a white 
egg-shell. 

Sometimes, in our prosaic moods, life appears 



WINTER. 385 

to us but a certain number more of days like 
those we have lived, to be cheered not by more 
friends and friendship, but probably fewer and 
less, as perchance we anticipate the end of this 
day before it is done, close the shutters, and, 
with a cheerless resignation, commence the bar- 
ren evening whose fruitless end we clearly see. 
We despondingly think that all of life which is 
left is only this experience repeated a certain 
number of times, and so it would be, if it were 
not for the faculty of imagination. 

The wonderful stillness of a winter day ! the 
sources of sound are, as it were, frozen up. 
Scarcely a tinkling rill of it is to be heard. 
When we listen, we hear only that sound of the 
surf of our internal sea rising and swelling in 
our ears as in two sea-shells. It is the sabbath 
of the year, stillness audible, or at most we hear 
the ice belching and crackling, as if struggling 
for utterance. 

A transient acquaintance with any phenom- 
enon is not sufficient to make it completely the 
subject of your muse. You must be so conver- 
sant with it as to remember it, and be reminded 
of it long afterward, while it lies remotely fair 
and elysian in the horizon, approachable only by 
the imagination. 

Feb. 13, 1860. ... It is surprising what a 
variety of distinct colors the winter can show us, 



386 WINTER. 

using but few pigments. The principal charm 
of a winter walk over ice is perhaps the pecul- 
iar and pure colors exhibited. There is the red 
of the sunset sky and of the snow at evening, 
and in rainbow flocks during the day, and in 
sun-dogs. 

The blue of the sky, and of the ice and water 
reflected, and of shadows on snow. 

The yellow of the sun, and the morning and 
evening sky, and of the sedge (or » straw color, 
bright when lit on the edge of ice at even- 
ing), and all these three colors in hoar frost 
crystals. 

Then there is the purple of the snow in drifts 
or on hills, of the mountains, and the clouds at 
evening. 

The green of evergreen woods, of the ice and 
water, and of the sky toward evening. 

The orange of the sky at evening. 

The white of snow and clouds, and the black 
of clouds, of water agitate^ and water saturat- 
ing thin snow or ice. 

The russet, and brown, gray, etc., of decid- 
uous woods. 

The tawny of the bare earth. 

I suspect that the green and rose (or purple) 
are not noticed on ice and snow unless it is 
pretty cold, and perhaps there is less greenness 
of the ice now than in December when the days 



WINTER. 387 

were shorter. The ice now may be too old and 
white. . . . The sun being in a cloud, partly ob- 
scured, I see a very dark purple tinge on the flat 
drifts on the ice, earlier than usual, and when 
afterward the sun comes out below the cloud, I 
see no purple nor rose. Hence it seems that the 
twilight has as much or more to do with this 
phenomenon, supposing the sun to be low, than 
the slight angle of its rays with the horizon. 

Always you have to contend with the stupidity 
of men. It is like a stiff soil, a hard pan. If 
you go deeper than usual, you are sure to meet 
with a pan made harder even by the super- 
ficial cultivation. The stupid you have always 
with you. Men are more obedient at first to 
words than to ideas. They mind names more 
than things. Read them a lecture on " Educa- 
tion," naming the subject, and they will think 
they have heard something important, but call 
it " Transcendentalism," and they will think it 
moonshine. Or halve your lecture, and put a 
psalm at the beginning and a prayer at the 
end of it, and they will pronounce it good with- 
out thinking. 

The Scripture rule, " Unto him that hath, 
shall be given," is true of composition. The 
more you have thought and written on a given 
theme, the more you can still write. Thought 
breeds thought. It grows under your hands. 



388 WINTER. 

Feb. 14, 1840. ... A very meagre natural 
history suffices to make me a child. Only their 
names and genealogy make me love fishes. I 
would know even the number of their fin rays, 
and how many scales compose the lateral line. 
I fancy I am amphibious and swim in all the 
brooks and pools in the neighborhood, with the 
perch and bream, or doze under the pads of our 
river amid the winding aisles and corridors 
formed by their stems, with the stately pick- 
erel. 

Feb. 14, 1841. I am confined to the house 
by bronchitis, and so seek to content myself with 
that quiet and serene life there is in a warm 
corner by the fireside, and see the sky through 
the chimney -top. Sickness should not be al- 
lowed to extend farther than the body. We 
need only to retreat farther within us, to pre- 
serve uninterrupted the continuity of serene 
hours to the end of our lives. As soon as I find 
my chest is not of tempered steel, and heart of 
adamant, I bid good-by to them and look out 
for a new nature. I will be liable to no acci- 
dents. 

I shall never be poor while I can command a 
still hour in which to take leave of my sin. 

Feb. 14, 1851. Consider the farmer who is 
commonly regarded as the healthiest man. He 
may be the toughest, but he is not the healthiest. 



WINTER. 389 

He has lost his elasticity. He can neither run 
nor jump. Health is the free use and command 
of all our faculties, and equal development. 
His is the health of the ox, an overworked buf- 
falo. His joints are stiff. The resemblance is 
true even in particulars. He is cast away in a 
pair of cowhide boots, and travels at an ox's 
pace. ... It would do him good to be thoroughly 
shampooed to make him supple. His health is 
an insensibility to all influence. But only the 
healthiest man in the world is sensible to the 
finest influence ; he who is affected by more or 
less electricity in the air. 

We shall see but a little way, if we require 
to understand what we see. How few things 
can a man measure with the tape of his under- 
standing ! How many greater things might he 
be seeing in the mean while ! One afternoon in 
the fall, November 21st, I saw Fair Haven Pond 
with its island and meadow ; between the island 
and the shore, a strip of perfectly smooth water 
in the lee of the island and two ducks sailing 
on it, and something more I saw which cannot 
easily be described, which made me say to my- 
self that the landscape could not be improved. 
I did not see how it could be- improved. Yet I 
do not know what these things can be. I be- 
gin to see such objects only when I leave off 
understanding them, and afterwards remember 



390 WINTER. 

them. I did not appreciate them before. But 
I get no farther than this. How adapted these 
forms and colors to our eyes, a meadow and its 
islands. What are these things? Yet the 
hawks and the ducks keep so aloof, and nature is 
so reserved. We are made to love the river and 
the meadow, as the wind to ripple the water. 

Feb. 14, 1852. ... I hate that my motive 
for visiting a friend should be that I want so- 
ciety, that it should lie in my poverty and weak- 
ness, and not in his and my riches and strength. 
His friendship should make me strong enough 
to do without him. 

Feb. 14, 1854. p. m. Down railroad. A moist, 
thawing, cloudy afternoon, preparing to rain. 
The telegraph resounds at every post. The finest 
strain from the American lyre. In Stow's wood 
by the deep Cut, hear the quah quah of the 
white-breasted, black-capped nuthatch. I went 
up the bank and stood by the fence. A little 
family of titmice gathered about me searching 
for their food both on the ground and on the 
trees with great industry and intentness, now 
and then pursuing each other. There were two 
nuthatches at least talking to each other. One 
hung with his head down on a large pitch pine 
pecking the bark for a long time, leaden blue 
above, with a black cap and white breast. It 
uttered almost constantly a faint but sharp . . . 



WINTER. 391 

creak, difficult to trace home, which appeared to 
be answered by a baser and louder quah quah 
from the other. A downy woodpecker with the 
red spot on his hind head and his cassock open 
behind, showing his white robe, kept up an in- 
cessant loud tapping on another pitch pine. 
All at once, an active little brown creeper makes 
its appearance, a small, rather slender bird with 
a long tail and sparrow-colored back, and white 
beneath. It commences at the bottom of a tree 
and glides up very rapidly, then suddenly darts 
to the bottom of a new tree, and repeats the 
same movement, not resting long in one place, 
or on one tree. These birds are all feeding and 
flitting along together, but the chickadees are 
the most numerous and the most confiding. I 
notice that three of the four kinds thus associ- 
ated, viz., the chickadee, nuthatch, and wood- 
pecker, have black crowns, at least the first two, 
very conspicuous black caps. I cannot but 
think that this sprightly association and readi- 
ness to burst into song have to do with the pros- 
pect of spring, more light, and warmth, and 
thawing weather. The titmice keep up an in- 
cessant, faint, tinkling tchip ; now and then 
one utters a brief day-day-day, and once or twice 
one commenced a gurgling strain quite novel, 
startling, and spring-like. Beside this I heard 
the distant crowing of cocks, and the divine 



392 WINTER. 

humming of the telegraph, all spring-promising 
sounds. The chickadee has quite a variety of 
notes. The phoebe one I did not hear to-day. 

Feb. 14, 1856. . . . How impatient, how ram- 
pant, how precocious these osiers ! They have 
hardly made two shoots from the sand in as 
many springs, when silvery catkins burst out 
along them, and anon, golden blossoms and 
downy seeds, spreading their race with incredi- 
ble rapidity. Thus they multiply and clan to- 
gether. Thus they take advantage even of the 
railroad, which elsewhere disturbs and invades 
their domains. May I ever be in as good spirits 
as a willow. They never despair. Is there 
no moisture longer in Nature which they can 
transmute into sap ? They are emblems of 
youth, joy, and everlasting life. Scarcely is 
their growth restrained by winter, but their 
silvery down peeps forth in the warmest days in 
January (?). 

Feb. 14, 1857. ... It is a fine, somewhat 
spring-like day. The ice is softening so that 
skates begin to cut in, and numerous caterpillars 
are now crawling about on the ice and snow, the 
thermometer in the shade N. of house standing 
at 42°. So it appears that they must often 
thaw in the course of the winter and find noth- 
ing to eat. 

Feb, 15, 1840. The * good seem to inhale a 



WINTER. 393 

generous atmosphere, and to be bathed in a more 
precious light than other men. Accordingly, 
Virgil describes the sedes beatas thus, 

Largior hie campos aether et lumine vestit 
Purpureo : Solenique suum, sua sidera norunt. 

Feb. 15, 1851. Alas ! alas ! when my friend 
begins to deal in confessions, breaks silence, 
makes a theme of friendship (which then is al- 
ways something past), and descends to merely 
human relations. As long as there is a spark of 
love remaining, cherish that alone. Only that 
can be kindled into a flame. — I thought that 
friendship, that love was possible between us. 
I thought that we had not withdrawn very far 
asunder. But now that my friend rashly, 
thoughtlessly, profanely speaks, recognizing the 
distance between us, that distance seems in- 
finitely increased. Of our friends we do not 
incline to speak, to complain to others ; we 
would not disturb the foundations of confidence 
that may still be. 

Why should we not still continue to live with 
the intensity and rapidity of infants? Is not 
the world, are not the heavens, as unfathomed 
as ever ? Have we exhausted any joy, any sen- 
timent ? 

Feb. 15, 1852. Perhaps I am descended from 
the Northman named " Thorer, the Dog- footed.',' 
Thorer Hund, to judge from his name, belonged 



394 WINTER. 

to the same family. " He was one of the most 
powerful men in the north." Thorer is one of 
the most common names in the chronicles of the 
Northmen, if not the most so. 

Feb. 15, 1855. . . . All day a steady, warm, 
imprisoning rain, carrying off the snow, not un- 
musical on my roof. It is a rare time for the 
student and reader who cannot go abroad in the 
p. M., provided he can keep awake, for we are 
wont to be as drowsy as cats in such weather. 
Without, it is not walking, but wading. It is so 
long since I have heard it, that the steady rush- 
ing, soaking sound of the rain on the shingles is 
musical. The fire needs no replenishing, and 
we save our fuel. It seems like a distant fore- 
runner of spring. It is because I am allied to 
the elements that the sound of the rain is thus 
soothing to me. This sound sinks into my 
spirit, as the water into the earth, reminding me 
of the season when snow and ice will be no 
more, when the earth will be thawed, and drink 
up the rain as fast as it falls. 

Feb. 15, 1858. To Cambridge and Boston. 
Saw at a menagerie a Canada lynx, said to have 
been taken at the White Mountains. It looked 
much like a monstrous gray cat standing on stilts, 
with its tail cut to five inches, a tuft of hair on 
each ear, and a ruff under the throat. 

Feb. 15, 1861. ... A kitten is so flexible 



WINTER. 395 

that she is almost double. The hind parts are 
equivalent to another kitten with which the fore 
part plays. She does not discover that her tail 
belongs to her till you tread upon it. How elo- 
quent she can be with her tail. She jumps into 
a chair and then stands on her hind legs to look 
out the window, looks steadily at objects far 
and near, first gazing this side, then that, for 
she loves to look out a window as much as any 
gossip. Ever and anon she bends back her ears 
to hear what is going on within the room, and all 
the while her eloquent tail is reporting the prog- 
ress and success of her survey by speaking ges- 
tures. . . . Then what a delicate hint she can 
give with her tail, passing perhaps underneath 
as you sit at table, and letting the tip of her 
tail just touch your legs, as much as to say I am 
here and ready for that milk or meat, though 
she may not be so forward as to look round at 
you when she emerges. — Only skin deep lies 
the feral nature of the cat unchanged still. I 
just had the misfortune to rock on to our cat's 
legs, as she was lying playfully spread out under 
my chair. Imagine the sound that arose, and 
which was excusable, but what will you say to 
the fierce growls and flashing eyes with which 
she met me for a quarter of an hour there- 
after. No tiger in its jungle could have been 
savager. 



396 WINTER. 

Feb. 16, 1841. For how slight an accident 
shall two noble souls wait to bring them to- 
gether. 

Feb. 16, 1852. It is interesting to meet an 
ox with handsomely spreading horns. There is 
a great variety of sizes and forms, though one 
horn commonly matches the other. I am willing 
to turn out for those that spread their branches 
wide. Large and spreading horns, I fancy, in- 
dicate a certain vegetable force and naturaliza- 
tion in the wearer ; they soften and ease off the 
distinction between the animal and the vegeta- 
ble, the unhorned animals and the trees. . . . 
The deer that run in the woods, as the moose, 
for instance, carry perfect trees on their heads. 
The French call them " bois." No wonder there 
are fables of centaurs and the like. No wonder 
there is a story of a hunter who when his bullets 
failed fired cherry stones into the heads of his 
game and so trees sprouted out of them, and the 
hunter refreshed himself with the cherries. It 
is a perfect piece of mythology which belongs to 
these days. Oxen, which are deanimalized, to 
some extent, approach nearer to the vegetable, 
perchance, than bulls and cows, and hence their 
bulky bodies, and large and spreading horns. 
Nothing more natural than that a deer should 
appear with a tree growing out of his head. 

Feb. 16, 1854. By this time in the winter I 



WINTER. 397 

do not look for those clear sparkling mornings 
and delicate leaf frosts which seem to belong to 
the earlier part of the winter, as if the air were 
now somewhat tarnished and debauched, had 
lost its virgin purity. 

Every judgment and action of a man qualifies 
every other, i. e., corrects our estimation of every 
other, as, for instance, a man's idea of immor- 
tality who is a member of a church, or his praise 
of you coupled with his praise of those whom 
you do not esteem. For, in this sense, a man is 
awfully consistent above his own consciousness. 
All a man's strength and all his weakness go to 
make up the authority of any particular opinion 
which he may utter. ... If he is your friend, 
you may have to consider that he loves you, but 
perchance he also loves gingerbread. . . . 

Columella, after saying that many authors 
had believed that the climate, qualitatem coeli 
statumque, was changed by lapse of time, longo 
cevi situ, refers to Hipparchus as having given 
out that the time would be when the poles of the 
earth would be moved from their places, tempus 
fore quo cardines mundi loco moverentur ; and 
as confirmatory of this, he, Columella, goes on to 
say that the vine and olive flourish now in some 
places where formerly they failed. He gives the 
names of about fifty authors who had treated 
de rusticis rebus before him. 



398 WINTER. 

Feb, 16, 1857. ... I perceive that some com- 
monly talented persons are enveloped and con- 
fined by a certain crust of manners, which, 
though it may sometimes be a fair and trans- 
parent enamel, yet only repels and saddens the 
beholder, since by its rigidity it seems to re- 
press all further expansion. They are viewed 
as at a distance, like an insect under a tumbler. 
They have, as it were, prematurely hardened 
both seed and shell, and this has severely taxed, 
if not put a period to, the life of the plant. This 
is to stand upon your dignity. . . . Such per- 
sons are after all but hardened sinners in a mild 
sense. The pearl is a hardened sinner. Man- 
ners get to be human parchment, in which sensi- 
ble books are often bound and honorable titles 
engrossed, though they may be very stiff and dry. 

Feb. 16, 1859. From the entrance of the mill 
road, I look back through the sunlight, this soft 
afternoon, to some white pine tops near Jenny 
Dugan's. Their flattish boughs rest stratum 
above stratum like a cloud, a green mackerel 
sky, hardly reminding me of the concealed earth 
so far beneath. They are like a flaky crust of 
the earth, a more ethereal, terebinthine, ever- 
green earth. It occurs to me that my eyes rest 
on them with the same pleasure as do those of 
the henhawk which has been nestled in them. 
My eyes nibble the piny sierra which makes 



WINTER. 399 

the horizon's edge as a hungry man nibbles a 
cracker. The henhawk and the pine are friends. 
The same thing which keeps the henhawk in the 
woods, away from cities, keeps me here. That 
bird settles with confidence on a white pine top, 
and not upon your weather-cock. That bird 
will not be poultry of yours, lays no eggs for 
you, forever hides its nest. Though willed or 
wild, it is not willful in its wildness. The un- 
sympathizing man regards the wildness of some 
animals, their strangeness to him, as a sin, as if 
all their virtue consisted in their tamableness. 
He has always a charge in his gun ready for 
their extermination. What we call wildness is 
a civilization other than our own. The hen- 
hawk shuns the farmer, but it seeks the friendly 
shelter and support of the pine. It will not 
consent to walk in the barnyard, but it loves to 
soar above the clouds. It has its own way and 
is beautiful when we would fain subject it to our 
will. So any surpassing work of art is strange 
and wild to the mass of men, as is genius itself. 
No hawk that soars and steals our poultry is 
wilder than genius, and none is more persecuted 
or above persecution. It can never be poet 
laureate, to say, " Pretty Poll," and " Polly want 
a cracker." 

Feb. 17, 1841. Our work should be fitted to 
and lead on the time, as bud, flower, and fruit 



400 WINTER. 

lead the circle of tlie seasons. — The mechanic 
works no longer than his labor will pay for 
lights, fuel, and shop rent. Would it not be 
well for us to consider if our deed will warrant 
the expense of nature? Will it maintain the 
sun's light ? — Our actions do not use time in- 
dependently, as the bud does. They should con- 
stitute its lapse. It is their room. But they 
shuffle after and serve the hour. 

Feb. 17, 1852. Perhaps the peculiar attrac- 
tiveness of those western vistas was partly ow- 
ing to the shortness of the days, when we natu- 
rally look to the heavens and make the most of 
the little light, when we live an arctic life, when 
the woodchopper's axe reminds us of twilight at 
three o'clock in the afternoon, when the morning 
and the evening literally make the whole day, 
when we travel as it were through the portals 
of the night, and the way is narrow as well as 
blocked with snow, when, too, the sun has the 
least opportunity to fill the air with vapor. . . . 

If you would read books on botany, go to the 
fathers of the science. Read Linnaeus at once, 
and come down from him as far as you please. 
I lost much time reading the florists. It is 
remarkable how little the mass of those interested 
in botany are acquainted with Linnaeus. I 
doubt if his "Philosophia Botanica," which Rous- 
seau, Sprengel, and others praised so highly, has 



WINTER. 401 

ever been translated into English. It is simpler, 
more easy to understand, than any of the hundred 
manuals to which it has given birth. A few 
pages of cuts representing the different parts of 
plants, with their botanical names attached, are 
worth whole volumes of explanation. Accord- 
ing to the classification of Linnaeus, I come 
under the head of Miscellaneous Botanophilists. 
"Botanophili sunt qui varia de vegetabilibus 
tradiderunt, licet ea non proprie ad scientiam 
Botanicam spectant," 

Feb. 17, 1854. p. m. To Gowing's Swamp. 
. . . The mice tracks are very amusing. It is 
surprising how numerous they are, and yet I 
rarely see a mouse. They must be nocturnal in 
their habits. Any tussocky ground is scored 
with them. I see, too, where they have run 
over the ice on the swamp (there is a mere 
sugaring of snow on it), ever trying to make 
an entrance, to get beneath it. You see deep 
and distinct channels in the snow in some places, 
as if a whole colony had long traveled to 
and fro in them, a highway, a well-known trail, 
but suddenly they will come to an end. And 
yet they have not dived beneath the surface, for 
you see where the single traveler who did it all 
has nimbly hopped along, as if suddenly scared, 
making but a slight impression, squirrel-like, in 
the snow. The squirrel also, though rarely, will 



402 WINTER. 

make a channel for a short distance. ... I sus- 
pect that the mice sometimes build their nests in 
bushes from the foundation, for . . . where J 
found two mice nests last fall, I find one begun 
with a very few twigs and some moss, close by 
where the others were, at the same height, and 
also on Prinos bushes, plainly the work of mice 
wholly. 

Feb. 18, 1838. ... I had not been out long 
to-day when it seemed that a new spring was 
already born ; not quite weaned, it is true, but 
verily entered upon existence. Nature struck up 
" the same old song in the grass," despite eight- 
een inches of snow. . . . 

Feb. 18, 1840. All romance is grounded on 
friendship. What is this rural, this pastoral, 
this poetic life but its invention ? Does not the 
moon shine for Endymion? Smooth pastures 
and mild airs are for some Coridon and Phyllis. 
Paradise belongs to Adam and Eve. Plato's 
Republic is governed by Platonic love. 

Feb. 18, 1841. . . . My recent growth does 
not appear in any visible new talent ; but its 
deed will enter into my gaze when I look into 
the sky or vacancy. It will help me to consider 
ferns and everlasting. . 

Man is like a tree which is limited to no age, 
but grows as long as it has its root in the 
ground. We have only to live in the alburnum, 
and not in the old wood. 



WINTER. 403 

A man is the hydrostatic paradox, the coun- 
terpoise of the system. You have studied flowers 
and birds cheaply enough, but you must lay your- 
self out to buy him. 

Feb. 18, 1842. ... I have a commonplace 
book for facts, and another for poetry, but I find 
it difficult always to preserve the vague distinc- 
tion which I had in my mind, for the most in- 
teresting and beautiful facts are so much the 
more poetry, and that is their success. They are 
translated from earth to heaven. I see that if 
my facts were sufficiently vital and significant, 
perhaps transmuted more into the substance of 
the human mind, I should need but one book of 
poetry to contain them all. 

It is impossible for the same person to see 
things from the poet's point of view and that of 
the man of science. The poet's second love may 
be science (not his first), when use has worn off 
the bloom. I realize that men may be born to a 
condition of mind at which others arrive in mid- 
dle age by the decay of their poetic faculties. 

Feb. 18, 1854. ... It is a little affecting to 
walk over the hills now, looking at the reindeer 
lichens here and there amid the snow, and re- 
member that erelong we shall find violets also in 
their midst. What an odds the season makes ! 
The birds know it ; whether a rose-tinted water 
lily is sailing amid the pads, or neighbor Hob- 



404 WINTER. 

son is getting out his ice with a cross-cut saw, 
while his oxen are eating their stalks. I noticed 
that the ice which Garrison cut the other day con- 
tained the lily pads and stemsk within it. How 
different their environment now from when the 
queenly flower, floating on the trembling surface, 
exhaled its perfume amid a cloud of insects ! . . . 

What a contrast between the upper and un- 
der side of many leaves, the indurated and col- 
ored upper side, and the tender, more or less 
colorless under side, male and female, even 
when they are almost equally exposed. The un- 
der side is commonly white, however, as turned 
away from the light toward the earth. Many in 
which the contrast is finest are narrow, revolute 
leaves, like the delicate and beautiful androm- 
eda polifolia, the ledum, kalmia glauca. . . . 
The handsome lanceolate leaves of the androm- 
eda polifolia, dark, but pure and uniform dull 
red above, strongly revolute, and of a delicate 
bluish-white beneath, deserve to be copied on 
works of art. 

Feb. 18, 1857. . . . p. m. The frost out of 
the ground and the ways settled in many places. 
... I am excited by this wonderful air, and go 
listening for the note of the bluebird or other 
comer. The very grain of the air seems to have 
undergone a change, and is ready to split into 
the form of the bluebird's warble. Methinks if 



WINTER. 405 

it were visible, or I could cast up some fine dust 
which would betray it, it would take a corre- 
sponding shape. The bluebird does not come 
till the air consents, and his wedge will enter 
easily. . . . 

What a poem is this of spring, so often re- 
peated ! I am thrilled when I hear it spoken of 
as the Spring of such a year, that Fytte of the 
glorious epic. 

Feb. 18, 1860. ... I think the most impor- 
tant requisite in describing an animal is to be 
sure that you give its character and spirit, for 
in that you have, without error, the sum and ef- 
fect of all its parts, known and unknown. You 
must tell what it is to man. Surely the most 
important part of an animal is its anima, its 
vital spirit, on which is based its character, and 
all the particulars by which it most concerns us. 
Yet most scientific books which treat of animals 
leave this out altogether, and what they describe 
are, as it were, phenomena of dead matter. 
What is most interesting in a dog, for instance, 
is his attachment to his master, his intelligence, 
courage, and the like, and not his anatomical 
structure, and even many habits which affect us 
less. If you have undertaken to write the biog- 
raphy of an animal, you must present to us the 
living creature, i. e., a result which no man can 
understand. He can only, in his degree, report 



406 WINTER. 

the impression made by it on him. Science, in 
many departments of Natural History, does not 
pretend to go beyond the shell, i. e., it does not 
get to animated nature at all. A history of 
animated nature must itself be animated. The 
ancients, one would say, with their Gorgons, 
Sphinxes, Satyrs, Mantichora, etc., could imag- 
ine more than existed, while the moderns can- 
not imagine so much as exists. 

We are as often injured as benefited by our 
systems, for, in fact, no human system is a tiue 
one. A name is at most a convenience, and 
carries no information with it. As soon as I 
begin to be aware of the life of any creature, I 
forget its name. When we have learned to dis- 
tinguish creatures, the sooner we forget their 
names the better, so far as any true apprecia- 
tion of them is concerned. I think, therefore, 
that the best and most harmless names are those 
which are an imitation of the voice or note of an 
animal, as they are the most poetic ones. But 
the name adheres only to the accepted and con- 
ventional bird or quadruped, never an instant to 
the real one. There is always something ridicu- 
lous in the name of a great man, as if he were 
named John Smith. The name is convenient in 
communicating with others, but it is not to be 
remembered when I communicate with myself. 

If you look over a list of medicinal recipes in 



WINTER. 407 

vogue in the last century, how foolish and use- 
less they are seen to be, and yet we use equally 
absurd ones with faith to-day. 

Feb. 19, 1841. A truly good book . . . 
teaches rue better than to read it. I must soon 
lay it down, and commence living on its hint. 
I do not see how any can be written more, but 
this is the last effusion of genius. ... It is 
slipping out of my fingers while I read. It 
creates no atmosphere in which it may be pe- 
rused, but one in which its teachings may be 
practiced. It confers on me such wealth that I 
lay it down with the least regret. What I began 
by reading, I must finish by acting. So I can- 
not stay to hear a good sermon, and applaud 
at the conclusion, but shall be half-way to Ther- 
mopylae before that. 

We linger in manhood to tell the dreams of 
our childhood, and they are half forgotten ere 
we acquire the faculty of expressing them. 

It is the unexplored grandeur of the storm 
which keeps up the spirits of the traveler. 
When I contemplate a hard and bare life in the 
woods, I find my last consolation in its untrivial- 
ness. Shipwreck is less distressing because the 
breakers do not trifle with us. We are resigned 
as lono- as we recognize the sober and solemn 
mystery of nature. The dripping mariner finds 
consolation and sympathy in the infinite sublim- 



408 WINTER. 

ity of the storm. It is a moral force as well 
as he. With courage he can lay down his life 
on the strand, for it never turned a deaf ear to 
him, nor has he ever exhausted its sympathy. 

In the love of narrow souls I make many 
short voyages, but in vain. I find no sea room 
But in great souls, I sail before the wind without 
a watch, and never reach the shore. 

Feb. 19, 1852. The sky appears broader 
now than it did. The day has opened its eye- 
lids wider. The lengthening of the days, 
commenced a good while ago, is a kind of fore- 
runner of the spring. Of course it is then 
that the ameliorating cause begins to work. 

To White Pond. . . . The strains from my 
muse are as rare nowadays or of late years as 
the notes of birds in the winter, the faintest 
occasional tinkling sound, and mostly of the 
woodpecker kind, or the harsh jay, or the crow. 
It never melts into a song, only the day-day-day 
of an inquisitive titmouse. 

Everywhere snow, gathered into sloping drifts 
about the walls and fences, and beneath the 
snow the frozen ground, and men are com- 
pelled to deposit the summer's provision in 
burrows in the earth, like the ground squirrel. 
Many creatures, daunted by the prospect, mi- 
grated in the fall, but man remains, and walks 
over the frozen snow crust, and over the stiff- 



WINTER. 409 

ened rivers and ponds, and draws now upon his 
summer stores. Life is reduced to its lowest 
terms. There is no home for you now in this 
freezing wind, but in that shelter which you pre- 
pared in the summer. You steer straight across 
the fields to that in season. I can with difficulty 
tell when I am over the river. There is a simi- 
lar crust over my heart. Where I rambled in 
the summer, and gathered flowers, and rested on 
the grass by the brook side in the shade, now 
no grass, nor flowers, nor brook, nor shade, but 
cold unvaried snow, stretching mile after mile, 
and no place to sit. Look at White Pond, that 
crystal drop that was, in which the umbrageous 
shore was reflected, and schools of fabulous 
perch and shiners rose to the surface, and where 
with difficulty you made your way along the 
pebbly shore in a summer afternoon, to the 
bathing place. Now you stalk rapidly across 
where it was, muffled in your cloak, over a more 
level snow field than usual, furrowed by the 
wind ; its finny inhabitants and its pebbly shore 
all bidden and forgotten, and you would shudder 
at the thought of wetting your feet. 

A fine display of the northern lights aften ten 
P. M., flashing up from all parts of the horizon 
to the zenith, where there was a kind of core 
formed, stretching S.S.E. N.N.W., surrounded 
by what looked like a permanent white cloud, 



410 WINTER. 

which, however, was very variable in form. The 
light flashes or trembles upward, as if it were 
the light of the sun reflected from a frozen mist 
in the upper atmosphere. 

Feb. 19, 1854. ... To Fair Haven by river, 
back by railroad. . . . The large moths appar- 
ently love the neighborhood of water, and are 
wont to suspend their cocoons over the edge of 
the meadow and river, places more or less inacces- 
sible to men, at least. I saw a button-bush with 
what, at first sight, looked like the open pods 
of the locust or of the water asclepias, attached. 
They were the light, ash-colored cocoons of the 
Attacus Promethea, with the completely with- 
ered and faded leaves wrapped around them, 
carefully and admirably secured to the twigs by 
fine silk wound round the leaf stalk and the twig. 
They add nothing to the strength of the co- 
coon, being deciduous, but aid in deception. 
They are taken at a little distance for a few 
curled and withered leaves left on. Though the 
particular twigs on which you find some co- 
coons may never, or very rarely, retain any 
leaves, there are enough leaves left on other 
shrubs and trees to warrant the adoption of this 
disguise. Yet it is startling to think that the 
inference has in this case been drawn by some 
mind, that as most other plants retain some 
leaves, the walker will suspect these also to. 



WINTER. 411 

Each and all such disguises and other resources 
remind us that not merely some poor worm's 
instinct, as we call it, but the mind of the uni- 
verse rather, which we share, has been intended 
upon each particular object. All the wit in the 
world was brought to bear on each case to secure 
its end. It was long ago in a full senate of all 
intellects determined how cocoons had best be 
suspended. Kindred mind with mine, that ap- 
proves and admires, decided it so. . . . 

Much study, a weariness of the flesh ! Ah, 
but did they not intend that we should read and 
ponder, who covered the whole earth with alpha- 
bets, primers, or Bibles, coarse or fine print? 
The very debris of the cliffs . . . are covered 
with geographic lichens. No surface is per- 
mitted to be bare long. . . . Was not he who 
creates lichens the abettor of Cadmus when 
he invented letters ? Types almost arrange 
themselves into words and sentences, as dust 
arranges itself under the magnet. Print ! it is 
a close-hugging lichen that forms on a favorable 
surface, which paper offers. The linen gets 
itself wrought into paper that the song of the 
shirt may be printed on it. Who placed us 
with eyes between a microscopic and a telescopic 
world ? 

Feb. 19, 1855. Many will complain of my 
lectures that they are transcendental, can't under- 



412 WINTER. 

stand them. "Would you have us return to 
the savage state ? " etc., etc., a criticism true 
enough, it may be, from their point, of view. 
But the fact is, the earnest lecturer can speak 
only to his like, and adapting himself to his 
audience is a mere compliment which he pays 
them. If you wish to know how I think, you 
must endeavor to pat yourself in my place. If 
you wish me to speak as if I were you, that is 
another affair. 

Feb. 19, 1857. A man cannot be said to suc- 
ceed in this life who does not satisfy one friend. 

Feb. 19, 1858. The traveler is defended and 
calloused. He deals with surfaces, has a great 
coat on ; but he who stays at home and writes 
about homely things gives us naked and tender 
thoughts and sentiments. 

Feb. 20, 1840. The coward's hope is suspi- 
cion ; the hero's doubt, a sort of hope. The 
gods neither hope nor doubt. 

Feb. 20, 1841. When I am going out for an 
evening, I arrange the fire in my stove so that I 
do not fail to find a good one when I return, 
though it would have engaged my frequent at- 
tention, present ; so that when I know I am to 
be at home, I sometimes make believe that I 
may go out to save trouble. And this is the art 
of living, too, to leave our life in a condition to 
go alone, and not to require a constant supervis- 



WINTER. 413 

ion. We will then sit down serenely to live, as 
by the side of a stove. 

When I sit in earnest, nothing must stand. 
All must be sedentary with me. 

I hear the faint sound of a viol and voices 
from the neighboring cottage, and think to 
myself, I will believe the muse only forever- 
more. It assures me that no gleam which comes 
over the serene soul is deceptive. It warns me 
of a reality and substance of which the best 
that I see is but the phantom and shadow. O 
Music, thou tellest me of things of which mem- 
ory takes no heed; thy strains are whispered 
aside from memory's ear. . . . Thou openest 
all my senses to catch the least hint, and givest 
me no thought. It would be good to sit at my 
door of summer evenings forever, and hear thy 
strains. Thou makest me to toy with speech, 
or walk content without it. ... I am pleased to 
think how ignorant and shiftless the wisest are. 

My imperfect sympathies with my friend are 
a cheerful, glimmering light in the valley. 

Feb. 20, 1842. I never yet saw two men suf- 
ficiently great to meet as two. In proportion 
as they are great, the differences are fatal, be- 
cause they are felt not to be partial, but total. 
Frankness to him who is unlike me will lead to 
the utter denial of him. . . . When two ap- 
proach to meet, they incur no petty dangers ; 



414 WINTER. 

they run terrible risks. Between the sincere 
there will be no civilities. No greatness seems 
prepared for the little decorums ; even savage 
unmannerliness it meets from equal greatness. 

My path hitherto has been like a road through 
a diversified country, now climbing high moun- 
tains, then descending into the lowest vales. 
From the summits I saw the heavens, from the 
vales I looked up at the heights again. In pros- 
perity I remember God, or memory is one with 
consciousness ; in adversity I remember my own 
elevation, and only hope to see God again. . . . 

The death of friends should inspire us as 
much as their lives. If they are great and rich 
enough, they will leave consolation to the mourn- 
ers before the expenses of their funerals. It 
will not be hard to part with worth, because it 
is worthy. How can any good depart ? It does 
not go and come, but we. 

Feb. 20, 1856. p. m. Up Assabet. See a 
broad and distinct otter trail made last night or 
yesterday. It came out to the river through the 
low woods N. of Pinxter swamp, making a very 
conspicuous trail from seven to nine or ten inches 
wide and three or four deep, with sometimes 
singularly upright sides, as if a square timber 
had been drawn along, but commonly rounded. 
It made some short turns and zigzags, passed 
under limbs which were only five inches above 



WINTER. 415 

the snow, not over them, had apparently slid 
down all banks and declivities, making a uni- 
form, broad, hollow trail there, without any 
marks of its feet. On reaching the river, it had 
come along under the bank, from time to time 
looking into the crevices, where it might get 
under the ice, sometimes ascending the bank and 
sliding back. On level ground its trail had this 



appearance I 

. . . tracks of feet twenty to twenty-four inches 
apart, but sometimes there was no track of the 
feet for twenty-five feet, frequently for six. In 
the last case there was a swelling in the outline 
as above. ... It entered a hole under the ice 
at Assabet spring, from which it has not issued. 

Feb. 20, 1857. What is the relation between 
a bird and the ear that appreciates its melody, 
to whom, perchance, it is more charming and sig- 
nificant than to any one else ? Certainly they 
are intimately related, and the one was made for 
the other. It is a natural fact. If I were to 
discover that a certain kind of stone by the pond 
shore was affected, say partially disintegrated, 
by a particular natural sound, as of a bird or 
insect, I see that one could not be completely 
described without describing the other. I am 
that stone by the pond side. 

What is hope, what is expectation, but a seed- 



416 WINTER. 

time whose harvest cannot fail, an irresistible ex- 
pedition of the mind, at length to be victorious ? 

Feb. 20, 1859. Have just read " Counter- 
parts, or the Cross of Love," by the author of 
" Charles Auchester." It is very interesting, its 
illustration of Love and Friendship, as showing 
how much we can know of each other through 
sympathy merely, without any of the ordinary 
information. You know about a person who 
deeply interests you more than you can be told. 
A look, a gesture, an act, which to everybody 
else is insignificant, tells you more about that 
one than words can. ... If he wished to con- 
ceal something from you, it would be apparent. 
It is as if a bird told you. . . . Sometimes from 
the altered manner of a friend which no cloak 
can possibly conceal, we know that something 
has happened, and what it was, all the essential 
particulars, though it would be a long story to 
tell, though it may involve the agency of four 
or five persons, who never breathed it to you, 
yet you are sure as if you detected all their 
tracks in the wood. You are the more sure, be- 
cause, in the case of love, effects follow their 
causes more inevitably than usual, this being a 
controlling power. 

How much the writer lives and endures in 
coming before the public so often ! A few years 
or books are with him equal to a long life of ex- 



WINTER. 417 

perience, suffering, etc. It is well if he does 
not become hardened. He learns how to bear 
contempt, and to despise himself. He makes, 
as it were, a post-mortem examination of him- 
self before he is dead. Such is art. 

Feb. 21, 1842. ... I must confess there is 
nothing so strange to me as my own body. I 
love any other piece of nature, almost, better. 

I was always conscious of sounds in nature 
which my ears could not hear, that I caught but 
a prelude to a strain. She always retreats as 
I advance. Away behind and behind is she 
and her meaning. Will not this faith and ex- 
pectation make itself ears at length ? I never 
saw to the end, nor heard to the end, but the 
best part was unseen and unheard. 

I am like a feather floating in the atmosphere. 
On every side is depth unfathomable. 

I have lived ill [of late] for the most part, 
because too near myself. I have tripped myself 
up, so that there was no progress for my own 
narrowness. I cannot walk conveniently and 
pleasantly but when I hold myself far off in 
the horizon, but when the soul dilutes the body 
and makes it passable. My soul and body have 
tottered along together, . . . tripping and hinder- 
ing one another, like unpracticed Siamese twins. 
They two should walk as one that no obstacle 
may be nearer than the firmament. 



418 WINTER. 

There must be some narrowness in the soul 
that compels one to have secrets. 

Feb. 21, 1855. ... A clear air, with a north- 
westerly March-like wind, as yesterday. What 
is the peculiarity in the air that both the in- 
valid in his chamber and the traveler on the 
highway say, "These are perfect March days"? 
The wind is rapidly drying up the earth, and 
elevated sands already begin to look whitish. 
How much light there is in the sky and on the 
surface of the russet earth ! It is reflected in 
a flood from all cleansed surfaces which rain and 
snow have washed, from the railroad rails, the 
mica on the rocks and the silvery latebrse of in- 
sects there, and I never saw the white houses 
of the village more brightly white. Now look 
for an early crop of arrowheads, for they will 
shine. When I have entered the wooded hol- 
low on the east of the Deep Cut, it is novel and 
pleasant to hear the sound of the dry leaves and 
twigs, which have so long been damp and silent, 
crackling again under my feet, though there is 
still considerable snow along wall-sides, etc., and 
to see the holes and galleries recently made by 
the mice (?) in the fine withered grass of such 
places. I see the peculiar softened blue sky of 
spring over the tops of the pines, and when I 
am sheltered from the wind I feel the warmer 
sun of the season reflected from the withered 



WINTER. 419 

grass and twigs on the side of this elevated hol- 
low. . . . When the leaves on the forest floor 
are dried and begin to rustle under such a sun 
and wind as these, the news is told to how many 
myriads of grubs that underlie them ! When 
I perceive this dryness under my feet, I feel as 
if I had got a new sense, or rather I realize 
what was incredible to me before, that there is a 
new life in nature beginning to awake. ... It 
is whispered through all the aisles of the forest 
that another spring is approaching. The wood 
mouse listens at the mouth of his burrow, and 
the chickadee passes the news along. We now 
notice the snow on the mountains, because on 
the remote rim of the horizon its whiteness con- 
trasts with the russet and darker hues of our 
bare fields. I looked at the Peterboro mountains, 
with my glass, from Fair Haven hill. I think 
there can be no more arctic scene than these 
mountains, on the edge of the horizon, completely 
crusted over with snow, the sun shining on them, 
seen through a telescope over bare russet fields 
and dark forests, with perhaps a house on some 
bare ridge seen against them. They look like 
great loaves incrusted with pure white sugar, and 
I think this must have been the origin of the 
name " sugar-loaf " sometimes given to moun- 
tains, and not their form. We look thus from 
russet fields into a landscape still sleeping under 



420 WINTER. 

the mantle of winter. The snow on the moun- 
tains has, in this case, a singular smooth and 
crusty appearance, and by contrast you see even 
single evergreens rising here and there above it ; 
and where a promontory casts a shadow along 
the mountain side, I saw what looked like a large 
lake of misty, bluish water on the side of the 
farther Peterboro mountain, its edges or shore 
very distinctly defined. This I concluded was 
the shadow of another part of the mountain, 
and it suggested that in like manner what on 
the surface of the moon is taken for water may 
be shadows. 

Feb. 21, 1860. ... It was their admiration 
of nature that made the ancients attribute those 
magnanimous qualities, which are surely to be 
found in man, to the lion, as her masterpiece. 
It is only by a readiness or preparedness to see 
more than appears in a creature that we can 
appreciate what is manifest. 

Feb. 21, 1861. . . . This plucking and strip- 
ping of a pine cone is a business which he [the 
squirrel] and his family understand perfectly. 
. . . He does not prick his fingers, nor pitch his 
whiskers, nor gnaw the solid cone any more 
than he needs to. Having sheared off the twigs 
and needles that may be in his way (for, like a 
skillful wood-chopper, he first secures room and 
verge enough), he neatly cuts off the stout stem 



WINTER. 421 

of the cone with a few strokes of his chisels, 
and it is his. To be sure, he may let it fall to 
the ground, and look down at it for a moment 
curiously, as if it were not his. But he is tak- 
ing note where it lies, that he may add it to his 
heap of a hundred more like it, and it is only so 
much the more his for his seeming carelessness. 
And when he comes to open it, observe how he 
proceeds. He holds it in his hands a solid em- 
bossed cone, so hard it almost rings at the touch 
of his teeth. He pauses for a moment, perhaps, 
but it is not because he does not know how to 
begin. He only listens to hear what is in the 
wind. He knows better than to cut off the top, 
and work his way downward against a cheval-d&> 
frise of advanced scales and prickles, or to gnaw 
into the side for three quarters of an inch in the 
face of many armed shields. He whirls it bot- 
tom upward in a twinkling, where the scales are 
smallest and the prickles slight or none, and the 
short stem is cut so close as not to be in his way, 
and there he proceeds to cut through the thin 
and tender bases of the scales, and each stroke 
tells, laying bare at once a couple of seeds. 
Thus he strips it as easily as if its scales were 
chaff, and so rapidly, twirling it as. he advances, 
that you cannot tell how he does it till you drive 
him off, and inspect his unfinished work. If 
there ever was an age of the world when the 



422 WINTER, 

squirrels opened their cones at the wrong end, it 
was not the golden age, at any rate. 

Feb. 22, 1841. . . . Friends wiU be much 
apart. They will respect more each other's 
privacy than their communion, for therein is the 
fulfillment of our high aims and the conclusion 
of our arguments. That we know and would 
associate with, not only has high intents, but goes 
on high errands, and has much private business. 
The hours my friend devotes to me were snatched 
from a higher society. He is hardly a gift level 
to me, but I have to reach up to take it. . . . 

We have to go into retirement religiously, 
and enhance our meeting by rarity and a degree 
of unfamiliarity. Would you know why I see 
thee so seldom, my friend ? In solitude I have 
been making up a packet for thee. 

Some actions which grow out of common but 
natural relations affect me strangely, as some- 
times the behavior of a mother to her children. 
So quiet and noiseless an action often moves me 
more than many sounding exploits. 

Feb. 22, 1852. . . . Every man will take 
such views as he can afford to take. Views 
one would think were the most expensive guests 
to entertain. I perceive that the reason my 
neighbor cannot entertain certain views is the 
narrow limits within which he is obliged to live 
on account of the smallness of his means. His 



WINTER. 423 

instinct tells him that it will not do to relax his 
hold here, and take hold where he cannot keep 
hold. 

Feb. 22, 1855. ... J. Farmer showed me 
an ermine weasel he caught in a trap three or 
four weeks ago. They are not very uncommon 
about his barns. All white, but the tip of the 
tail. Two conspicuous canine teeth in each jaw. 
In summer they are distinguished from the red 
weasel, which is a little smaller, by the length of 
their tails particularly, six or more inches, while 
the red one's is not more than two inches long. 
. . . He had seen a partridge drum standing on 
a wall ; said it stood very upright, and produced 
the sound by striking its wings together behind 
its back, as a cock often does, but did not strike 
the wall nor its body. This he is sure of, and 
declares that he is mistaken who affirms the con- 
trary, though it were Audubon himself. Wil- 
son says he " begins to strike with his stiffened 
wings," while standing on a log, but does not 
say what he strikes, though one would infer it 
was either the log or his body. Peabody says he 
beats his body with his wings. 

Feb. 22, 1856. . . . Now first, the snow 
melting and the ice beginning to soften, I see 
those slender, grayish-winged insects creeping 
with closed wings over the snow-clad ice. Have 
seen none before this winter. They are on all 



424 WINTER. 

parts of the river, of all sizes, from one third 
of an inch to an inch long ; are to be seen every 
warm day afterward. 

Feb. 23, 1841. . . . There is a subtle elixir 
in society which makes it a fountain of health 
to the sick. We want no consolation which is 
not the overflow of our friend's health. "We 
will have no condolence, who are not dolent our- 
selves. We would have our friend come and 
respire healthily before us with the fragrance 
of many meadows and heaths in his breath, and 
we will inhabit his body while our own recruits. 
— Nothing is so good medicine in sickness as to 
witness some nobleness in another which will 
advertise us of health. In sickness it is our 
faith that ails, and noble deeds reassure us. 

That anybody has thought of you on some 
indifferent occasion frequently implies more 
good will than you had reason to expect. You 
have henceforth a stronger motive for conduct. 
We do not know how many amiable thoughts 
are current. 

Feb. 23, 1842. . . . True politeness is only 
hope and trust in men. It never addresses a 
fallen or falling man, but salutes a rising gener- 
ation. It does not flatter, but only congratu- 
lates. 

Feb. 23, 1853. ... I think myself in a wilder 
country, and a little nearer to primitive times, 



WINTER. 425 

when I read in old books which spell the word 
savages with an I (salvages), like John Smith's 
" General Historie of Virginia," etc., reminding 
me of the derivation of the word from sylva, 
some of the wild wood and its bristling branches 
still left in their language. The savages they 
describe are really salvages, men of the woods. 

Feb. 23, 1854. a. m. The snow drives hori- 
zontally from the north or northwesterly in long 
waving lines like the outline of a swell or 
billow. 

p. M. Saw some of those architectural drifts 
forming. The fine snow came driving along 
over the field like steam curling from a roof. 
As the current rises to go over the wall, it pro- 
duces a lull in the angle made by the wall and 
the ground, and accordingly just enough snow is 
deposited there to fill the triangular calm, but 
the greater part passes over, and is deposited in 
the larger calm. A portion of the wind also 
apparently passes through the chinks of the 
wall, and curves upward against the main drift, 
appearing to carve it, and perforate it in various 
fashions, holding many snowy particles in sus- 
pension, in vertical eddies. I am not sure to 
what extent the drift is carved and perforated, 
and how far the snow is originally deposited in 
these forms. 

Feb, 23, 1855. . . . Mr. L. says that he and 



426 WINTER. 

his son George fired at white swans in Texas 
on the water, and though George shot two with 
ball, and killed them, the others in each case 
gathered about them, and crowded them off out 
of their reach. 

Feb. 23, 1856. ... I read in the papers 
that the ocean is frozen, or has been lately, on 
the back side of Cape Cod, at the Highland 
Light, one mile out from the shore (not to 
bear or walk on probably), a phenomenon 
which, it is said, the oldest have not witnessed 
before. 

Feb. 23, 1857. p. m. See two yellow-spotted 
tortoises in the ditch S. of Trillium wood. You 
saunter expectant in the mild air along the soft 
edge of a ditch filled with melted snow, and 
paved with leaves in some sheltered place, yet 
perhaps with some ice at one end still, and are 
thrilled to see stirring mid the leaves at the 
bottom, sluggishly burying themselves from 
your sight again, these brilliantly spotted crea- 
tures. There are commonly two, at least. The 
tortoise is stirring in the ditches again. In 
your latest spring, they still look incredibly 
strange when first seen, and not like cohabitants 
and contemporaries of yours. 

I say in my thought to my neighbor who was 
once my friend, It is of no use to speak the 
truth to you. You will not hear it. What then 
shall I say to you ? 



WINTER. 427 

At the instant that I seem to be saying fare- 
well forever to one who has been my friend, I 
find myself unexpectedly near to him, and it is 
our very nearness and dearness to each other 
that gives depth and significance to that " for- 
ever." Thus I am a helpless prisoner, and these 
chains I have no skill to break. While I think 
I have broken one link, I have been forging 
another. — I have not yet known a Friendship 
to cease, I think. I fear I have experienced its 
decaying. Morniug, noon, and night, I sutler 
a physical pain, an aching of the breast which 
unfits me for my tasks. It is perhaps most 
intense at evening. With respect to Friendship 
I feel like a wreck that is driving before the 
gale, with a crew suffering from hunger and 
thirst, not knowing what shore, if any, they 
may reach, so long have I breasted the conflict- 
ing waves of this sentinent, my seams open and 
my timbers laid bare. I float on Friendship's 
sea simply because my specific gravity is less 
than its, but no longer that stanch and graceful 
vessel that careened so buoyantly over it. My 
planks and timbers are scattered. At most I 
hope to make a sort of raft of Friendship on 
which with a few of our treasures we may float 
to some land. — That aching of the breast, the 
grandest pain that man endures, which no ether 
can assuage ! 



428 WINTER. 

You cheat me, you keep me at a distance with 
your manners. I know of no other dishonesty, 
no other devil. Why this doubleness, these 
compliments? They are the worst of lies. A 
lie is not worse between traders than a compli- 
ment between friends. I would not, I cannot 
speak. I will let you feel my thought, my feel- 
ing. — Friends ! They are united for good, for 
evil. They can delight each other as none other 
can. Lying on lower levels is but a trivial 
offense compared with civility and compliments 
on the level of Friendship. 

I visit my friend for joy, not for disturbance. 
If my coming hinders him in the least conceiva- 
ble degree, I will exert myself to the utmost to 
stay away. I will get the Titans to help me stand 
aloof, will labor night and day to construct a 
rampart between us. If my coming casts but 
the shadow of a shadow before it, I will retreat 
swifter than the wind, and more untrackable. I 
will be gone irrevocably, if possible, before he 
fears that I am coming. 

If the teeth ache, they can be pulled. If the 
heart aches, what then ? Shall we pluck it out ? 

Must friends then expect the fate of those 
oriental twins, that one shall at last bear about 
the corpse of the other, by that same ligature 
that bound him to a living companion ? 

Look before you leap. Let the isthmus be 



WINTER. 429 

cut through, unless sea meets sea at exactly 
the same level, unless a perfect understanding 
and equilibrium has been established from the 
beginning around Cape Horn and that unnamed 
northern cape, what a tumult ! It is Atlantic 
and Atlantic, or Atlantic and Pacific. 

I have seen signs of the spring. I have seen 
a frog swiftly sinking in a pool, or where he 
dimpled the surface as he leapt in, I have seen 
the brilliant spotted tortoise stirring at the bot- 
tom of ditches, I have seen the clear sap trick- 
ling from the red maple. 

Feb. 23, 1859. [Worcester.] P. M. Walk 
to Quinsigamond Pond, where was very good 
skating yesterday, but this very pleasant and 
warm day it is suddenly quite too soft. I was 

just saying to B that I should look for hard 

ice in the shade or on the N. side of some hill 
close to the shore, though skating was out of the 
question elsewhere, when looking up I saw a gen- 
tleman and lady very gracefully gyrating, and, 
as it were, courtesying to each other, in a small 
bay under such a hill on the opposite shore of 
the pond. Intervening bushes and shore con- 
cealed the ice, so that their swift and graceful 
motions, their bodies inclined at various angles, 
as they gyrated forward and backward about a 
small space, looking as if they would hit each 
other, reminded me of the circling of two 



430 WINTER. 

winged insects in the air, or hawks receding and 
approaching. 

I first hear and then see eight or ten bluebirds 
going over. 

Feb. 23, 1860. 3 p. m. Thermometer 58° 
and snow almost gone, river rising. We have 
not had so warm a day since the beginning of 
December, which was unusually warm. I walk 
over the moist Nawshawtuck hillside, and see the 
green radical leaves of the buttercup, shepherd's 
purse, sorrel, chickweed, cerastium, etc., revealed. 

A fact must be the vehicle of some humanity 
in order to interest us. Otherwise it is like 
giving a man a stone when he asks for bread. 
Ultimately the moral is all in all, and we do not 
mind it if inferior truth is sacrificed to superior, 
as when the annalist fables, and makes animals 
speak and act like men. It must be warm, 
moist, incarnated, have been breathed on at least. 
A man has not seen a thing who has not felt it. 



INDEX. 



Aborigines, 144. 

Account book, 266-269. 

Acquaintances, 318. 

Activity, 282. 

Acton, 198. 

Adams, John Quincy, 88. 

Adversity, 414. 

Advice, 43, 367. 

iEschylus, 279. 

Air, 404, 418. 

Alcott, 196. 

Alderberry, 152. 

Alders, 87, 89, 94, 97, 152, 153, 155, 

177, 370, 371. 
Alley, John B., 174. 
Ambition, 310. 
Amherst, 12, 161. 
Ancients, 406, 420. 
Andromeda, 125, 152, 153, 189. 190, 

252, 307, 308, 339, 404. 
Andromeda ponds, 15, 57. 
Animals, 136, 405. 
Ants, 221. 
Aphorisms, 137, 144, 183, 196, 254, 

256, 396. 
Apple-tree, 343. 
Arabians, 222. 
Arctic animals, 49. 
Arctic voyagers, 66. 
Aristotle, 35, 122. 
Arrowheads, 132, 380, 418. 
Arthur, 37, 213. 
Ashes, 100. 
Aspirations, 310. 
Assabet, 177, 414. 
As3abet spring, 415. 
Asters, 30. 
Astrology, 216. 
Astronomy, 217. 
Atlantis, 168, 203. 
Atmosphere, 146, 175, 359, 360. 
Attacus Promethea, 410. 
Audience, the, 310. 
Auditors, 339. 



Authors, 42. 
Azalea, 152. 

Bacon, 264. 

Baffin's Bay, 94. 

Bailey, 188. 

Baker farm, 3, 176. 

Balm of Gilead, 363. 

Barberry, 5, 97. 

Barber's Historical Collections, 328. 

Barnsdale wood, 9. 

Barrett, N., 5. 

Barry, 187. 

Bartlett's Cliff, 27 

Baskets, 118, 143. 

Bear, 158, 360, 361. 

Beauty, 82, 105, 213. 

Beehives, 337. 

Bees, 363. 

Beliefs, 304, 305, 338. 

Bell, 25, 219, 338. 

Beomyces rosaceus, 133, 207. 

Berries, 29, 70, 71, 85, 86, 97, 125, 

143, 153. 
Bidens Brook, 374. 
Billerica, 325. 
Bingham's Purchase, 93. 
Birches, 86, 96, 97, 111, 112, 113, 

201, 252, 258, 373. 
Birches, black, 112, 258. 
Birches, canoe, 112. 
Birohes, white, 113, 373. 
Birches, yellow, 111, 112, 113. 
Birds, 50, 97, 132, 197, 276, 317, 327, 

331, 391, 408. 
Birds' nests, 171, 203. 
Bittern Cliff, 311. 
Blueberry, 68, 69, 152, 153, 252. 
Blueberry bushes, 16. 
Bluebirds, 53, 54, 404, 430. 
Bluejays, 73. 

Blueness, 179, 215, 298, 348. 
Bluet, 70. 
Body, 202, 331, 332, 379, 417. 



432 



INDEX. 



Bombay, 184. 

Bonnets, 23, 24. 

Books, 318, 323, 407. 

Booming of pond, 88. 

Boston, 21, 70, 161, 178, 394. 

Boston Common, 199. 

Boston Harbor, 210, 234. 

Botany, 222, 342, 400. 

Boxboro', 108, 109. 

Boys skating, 325, 327. 

Bretagne, 37. 

Bridges, 326. 

Brilliants, 188, 189. 

Bnster's Hill, 27, 30, 70. 

Barter's Spring, 275. 

Brecon's Camp, 169. 

Brooks, 112, 163, 249. 

Brown, Simon, 361, 368, 369. 

Brown's scrub oak lot, 136. 

Buds, 251, 300, 301, 363. 

Buffoonery, 238. 

Buffum, Jonathan, 174, 178, 179. 

Building, 176. 

Bunker Hill, 70. 

Burton, 365. 

Buzzing sound, 169, 170. 

C, W. E., 53. 

" Cabinet Council," the, 146. 

Cake, 143, 144. 

Cambridge, 161, 394. 

Canada, 99, 118. 

Canada lynx, 394. 

Canal, 22. 

Cape Cod, 103, 426. 

Capital, 196. 

Carlisle, 167. 

Cars, 321. 

Cartridge-box, 110. 

Cassandra ponds, 188. 

Caterpillar, 142, 177, 246, 247, 375, 

392. 
Catkins, 94, 97, 133, 155, 252, 256, 

364, 370, 392. 
Cato, 175, 176, 194, 195, 370. 
Cat-owl, 41. 
Cat-tails, 248. 
Cattle, 53. 
Causeways, 326. 
Cawing of crows, 164, 296, 297. 
Channing, 285. 
Character, 72. 
Chaucer, 96. 
Chemistry, 236. 
Chestnut burs, 7 
Chickadees, 50, 122, 167, 178, 201, 

295, 373, 391, 392, 419. 
duckweed, 193, 311, 341. 
Church bells, 8. 
Cinnamon stone, 102. 



Civilization, 367, 368. 

Clamshell Hill, 124, 132. 

Clamshells, 34. 

Clematis Brook, 311, 312. 

Cliff Hill, 311. 

Cliffs, 96, 98, 99, 146, 168, 320. 

Climate, 42. 

Clouds, 18, 38, 127, 128, 130, 137, 

148, 168, 193, 203, 204, 206, 258, 

278, 320. 
Clover, 85, 132, 251. 
Club, 135, 160. 
Cock-crowing, 28, 41, 53, 78, 129, 

143, 164, 228, 230, 234, 263, 297, 

298, 391. 
Cockle shells, 370. 
Cocoons, 14, 171, 177, 178, 410. 
Cold, 13, 59, 133, 134, 151, 161, 226, 

233, 234, 248, 285, 293, 343, 344, 

356. 
Cold Friday, 226, 344. 
Coleridge, 238. 
College teaching, 81. 
Colors, 381, 386. 
Colors on snow and ice, 155, 156, 

377, 383, 384, 387. 
Columella, 175, 176, 397. 
Commonplace books, 403. 
Companions, 49, 77, 135, 160. 
Composition, 387. 
Conantum, 63, 250. 
Conantum End, 10. 
Concord, 12, 25, 28, 29, 93, 102, 134, 

146, 161, 326. 
Concord River, 124, 188. 
Conscience, 254, 279. 
Consciousness, 379. 
Consistency, 397. 
Constellations, 215. 
Conversation, 77, 127. 
Corn, 143. 
Cornel, 312. 
Corner road, 220, 311. 
" Counterparts," 416. 
Cow-bell, 337. 
Cows, 150, 336. 

Cracking of ground, 12, 156, 344. 
Creaking of wagon, 220, 343. 
Creeper, 391. 
Cress, 6, 311. 
Crickets, 53, 352. 
Cromwell, 116* 
Crowfoot, 147, 148. 
Crows, 40, 48, 89, 161, 164, 228, 296, 

297. 
Crystallizations, 8, 344, 374. 
Crystals, 2, 91, 92, 119, 137, 166, 213, 

287, 321, 375, 383. 
Cymri, 37. 



INDEX. 



433 



Daguerreotype, 309, 310. 

Dandelion, 251. 

Days, lengthening of, 408. 

Days, shortness of, 400. 

Dead, the, 13. 

Death, 14, 51, 202, 331, 333, 414. 

Debtor and creditor, 252. 

Decay, 269. 

Deep Cut, 215, 231, 232, 248, 418. 

Deer. 220, 396. 

Demigod, 52. 

Dennis's Swamp, 124. 

Derby's Bridge, 226. 

Devil, 351. 

Dew-drops, 119, 126. 

Diogenes, 1S5. 

Diplomacy, 66. 

Disappointments, 204, 342. 

Discipline, 91. 

Ditch Pond, 235. 

Diver, 28. 

Dob-chick. 28. 

Dog. 236. 24S, 316, 405. 

Dog-barking, 40, 41, 42. 

Dogwood, 5, 124, 153, 252. 

Dormancy, 65, 376. 

Dreams, 136, 253, 254, 407. 

Dress, 24. 343. 

Drizzle, 84. 

Duck, 39, 132, 276, 389, 390. 

Dugan, Jenny, 32, 398. 

Duty, 378. 

E., R. W., 119, 210. 

Early New England writers, 148. 

Early risin?, 233. 

Earth, the, 3, 73, 143. 

Earth, perfume from, 138. 

Earth voice, 103. 

Echo, 50, 368, 369. 

Elms, 54, 98, 112, 198, 200, 241, 242. 

Emberiza nivalis, 54. 

Emergencies. 340. 

Emerson, 163, 214, 327. 

Emerson, Miss, 141, 261. 

England, 115. 

Englishman, ^08. 

Ermine weasel, 423. 

Erskine, 17. 

Esox fasciatus. 212. 

Esquimaux, 11, 49, 211. 

Estrangement, 76, 223, 354, 355, 356. 

Etiquette, 335. 

Experience, 147, 153, 162. 

Expression, 23,. 

Eyes, 163. 

Fables, 35, 235. 

Fact, 430. 

Facts, precedence in, 238. 



Failures, 363. 

Fair Haven, 83, 117, 188, 250, 312, 

410. 
Fair Haven Hill, 38, 63, 83, 231, 321, 

356. 
Fair Haven Island, 16, 389. 
Fair Haven Pond, 3, 20, 22, 33, 39, 
SO, 140, 229, 288, 293, 314, 322, 359, 
363, 375, 383, 389. 
Faith, 298, 299. 
Falco lineatus, 165. 
Fame, 310. 
Farmer, J., 423. 
Farmer, Mr., 164, 165, 174. 
Farmers, 32, 56, 150, 200, 323, 336, 

388, 389. 
Fences, 10. 
Ferns, 125, 275. 
Fields, 266. 
Finches, 4S, 89. 
Fire, 5, 99, 324, 325, 412. 
Firs, 30, 86. 

Fisherman, 7, 48, 91, 359. 
Fishes, 7, 59, 123, 388. 
Fish-hawk, 65. 
Fitchburg, 330. 
Flame, 99. 
Flattery, 357. 

Flint's Pond, 6, 7, 14, 20, 39, 163. 
Floating islands, 309. 
Flowers, 290, 343. 
Forest. 8. 
ForestHaU, 75. 
Forest voices, 103. 
Fox [Charles James], 17, 116. 
Foxes, 16, 42, 48, 94, 104, 220, 235, 
287, 288, 289, 293, 315, 316, 364, 
365. 
Fox-hound, 207. 
Freezing, 13, 61. 

Friends, 1, 2, 12, 14, 75, 76, 205, 215, 

223, 225, 278, 280, 290, 298, 299, 

303. 305, 310, 342, 347, 393, 412, 

422, 426, 428. 

Friendship, 1, 253. 346, 354, 355, 356, 

358, 393, 402, 416, 427, 428. 
Fringilla hyemalis, 6, 48. 
Frost, 151, 343. 
Frost-work, 198, 199. 
Funeral customs, 184. 
Fungi, 113, 262, 286. 
Future, the, 140. 

Game, 91. 

Gardiner, Captain, 46, 48. 

Gaylussacia, 68. 

" General Historie of Virginia," 

425. 
Genius, 43, 197, 255, 264, 378, 379, 



434 



INDEX. 



Georgic, 61, 62. 

Ghosts, 8. 

Gladness, 107. 

Glaze, 15, 29, 198, 199. 

Gods, 228. 

Golden Age, 61, 62, 

Goldfinches, 6. 

Good, the, 392, 393. 

Goodwill, 424. 

Gowing's Swamp, 307, 401. 

Grammar, 104. 

Grasses, 31, 84, 87. 

Grasshoppers, 246. 

Great Fields, 153. 

Great Meadows, 185, 286, 300. 

Grebe, 28. 

Greece, 106, 146, 186. 

Greeks, 41, 146, 168. 278, 279, 

Greeley, Horace, 298. 

Green Island, 118. 

Greenland, 69. 

Greenness, 32, 212. 

Grief, 193. 

Grisly bear, 360, 361. 

Groves, 195, 196. 

Growth, 402. 

Guitar, 172. 

Gulf Stream, 29. 

Gutenberg, 183. 

Hangbirds, 54. 
Hannibal, 204. 
Happiness, 114, 123, 159, 190, 204, 

212. 
Haste, 45. 
Hats, 23, 24. 

Hawks, 65, 164, 165, 174, 295, 390. 
Haycocks, 175. 
Eayden, 347. 
Head, Sir Francis, 340. 
Health, 44, 57, 389. 
Heath, 70. 
Heaven, 256. 
Help, 366, 367. 
Hemlocks, 8, 30, 167. 
Hen-hawk, 65, 165, 396, 399. 
Hens, 143, 164, 180, 193, 337. 
Heywood's Meadow, 248. 
Hickory, 251. 
Highland Light, 426. 
Hill, Mr., 119. 
Hill, the, 165, 270. 
Hills, 70, 140, 141. 
Hip*, 97. 

" History of Animals," 35. 
Holden wood, 377. 
Holly, 29. 
Holt, 104. 
Holt Bend, 61. 
Homer, 139, 275. 



Homesickness, 37. 
Hope, 412, 415. 
Hubbard's Bath, 201, 
Hubbard's Bridge, 59. 
Hubbard's Field, 85. 
Hubbard's Meadow, 377. 
Hubbard's Swamp, 111. 
Hubbub, 123. 
Huckleberries, 48. 
Huckleberry, 36, 68, 70. 
Huckleberry cake, 143, 144. 
Huckleberry pastures, 70. 
Hume, 99. 
Humor, 3. 
Hunt farm, 5. 
Hunt pasture, 111. 
Hunters, 27, 90, 226. 
Hunt's Island, 124. 
Hymn, 228. 

Ice, 22, 30, 32, 50, 60, 84, 85, 91, 96, 
97, 98, 114, 188, 212, 234, 247, 252, 
258, 301, 306, 307, 311, 314, 366, 
371, 376, 383, 392, 401. 

Ice-cracks, 50, 306. 

Ice-flakes, 379, 380. 

Icicles, 13. 

Imagination, 19, 385. 

India rubber, 40. 

Indian heaven, 132. 

Indians, 48, 66, 91, 109, 118, 143, 
224, 235, 275, 332, 333, 380. 

Industry, 230. 

Infidel, 173. 338. 

Influence, 378. 

Innocence, 52, 272. 

Insanity, 57. 

Insects, 247, 271, 286, 312, 423. 

Instinct, 411. 

Integrity, 281, 378. 

Invitation, 224, 225, 305. 

January, 313. 

January thaw, 132, 138. 

Jays, 73, 312, 373. 

Jesuits, 224. 

Johnswort, 62, 147, 251, 311, 346. 

Jones, Ephraim, 267. 

Jonson, 357. 

Josselyn, 148, 202, 352. 

Journal, 32, 115, 167, 240, 264, 265, 

281, 350. 
Journey, 265. 
Juniper, 251. 

Kalmia glauca, 308, 339, 404. 
Kirkham, 104. 
Kitten, 11, 394, 395. 
Knavery, 372. 
Knowledge, 127. 



INDEX. 



435 



Labor, division of, 36. 
Lake school, 227. 
Lakin, Jake, 104. 
Landor quoted, 305, 306. 
Landscape, S6, 87, 97, 99, 100, 108, 

109, 322, 34& 
Language, 334. 
Larks, 12, 29, 48. 
Lamed Brook, 307. 
Laws, 303, 304. 
Leaves, 404, 430. 
Lecture, 76, 174, 208, 209, 214, 284, 

285, 411. 
Lecturer, 158. 
Ledum latif olium, 339, 406. 
Lee place, 100. 
Lee's Bridge, 33. 
Lee's Cliff, 22, 201, 302, 324. 
Leisure, 45, 157. 
Le Jeune quoted, 88, 89. 
Lepraria chloriua, 180. 
Letter writing, 50. 
Libraries, 318, 319. 
Lichens, 31, 32, 74, 75, 133, 180, 

207, 258, 270, 311, 348, 349, 403, 

411. 
Life, 9, 12, 18, 32, 42, 44, 45, 51, 82, 

89, 90, 91, 132, 140, 162, 163, 172, 

173, 181, 218, 231, 255, 263, 318, 

353, 358, 385, 409. 
Life everlasting, 346. 
Light, 384, 418. 
Lily roots, 34. 
Limits, 330, 331. 
Linaria, 364. 
Linnaeus, 352, 400, 401. 
Lion, 420. 
Little John, 8. 
Little Nahant, 179. 
Lives, 147. 
Living, 157, 412. 
Loafer, 45. 
Long Wharf, 21. 
Love, 201, 232, 290. 
Love-cracked, 187. 
Lover, 347. 
Lumber, 65. 
Lu ral lu ral lu, 342. 
Lycopus, 15, 16. 
Lynn, 174. 

Mackenzie's River, 94. 

Magazines, 42. 

Maine, 143. 

Maine woods, 93. 

Man, 106, 107, 122, 135, 160, 173, 183, 

212, 262, 335. 
Manners, 398, 426. 
Maples, 87, 177, 250, 306, 37L 
Marsh, 248. 



Mather, Cotton, letteT of, 328, 329. 

" Maxims of State," 146. 

McKean, 186, 187. 

Meadow, 390. 

Meadow mouse, 39, 314, 316. 

Meadow walk, 372. 

Medicinal recipes, 406. 

Meeting, 413. 

Men, 110, 135, 159, 160, 183, 213, 

228, 237, 281, 335,403. 
Mice, 182. 

Migratory instinct, 247. 
Miles, Martial, 126, 296. 
Mill Brook, 6, 163. 
Mill dam, 55. 
Milton, 145, 279. 
Ministerial Swamp, 131. 
Minott, 104, 220, 228, 276, 277, 278, 

338. 
Minott's Meadow, 163. 
Minstrelsy, heroes of, 37. 
Mirage, 359, 360. 
Mist, 73, 137. 
Mocking bird, 231. 
Moles, 47, 48. 
Moment, the, 255. 
Money, 343. 
Montaigne, 265. 
Moods, 9, 82, 83. 
Moonlight, 203, 215, 320, 322. 
Moose, 285. 
Morality, 138, 139. 
Morning, 128, 137, 258, 259. 
Mosses, 75, 23L 
Moths, 410. 
Motions in Nature, 52. 
Mountains, 14, 40. 
Mount Washington, 69, 110. 
Mouse. 152, 183, 316, 419. 
Music,' 41, 139, 140, 172, 173, 181, 

232, 335, 340, 353, 413. 
Musketaquid. 64, 65, 199, 227. 
Musketicook, 326. 
Muskrats, 33, 35, 67, 132, 225, 226, 

228, 229, 296, 302, 306, 341, 374. 
Myself, 316, 317, 347, 36a 
Mythologies, 41, 396. 

Naevia, 36. 

Names, 406. 

Nantucket, 29, 46, 47. 

Nashua, 12. 

Natural history, 406. 

Natural objects, 109. 

Nature, 6, 15, 18, 71, 72, 105, 106, 

109, 110, 126, 135, 137, 147, 231, 

236, 257, 309, 317. 
Naushon, 29. 
Nawshawtuck, 128, 430. 
Neighbor, 95, 154. 



436 



INDEX. 



New Bedford, 28, 29. 

New England, 32, 33, 109, 132. 

" New England's Prospect," 149. 

New Hampshire, 71, 110. 

New Testament, 1, 297, 298. 

News, 55, 56. 

Night, 83, 215, 217, 218. 

Nobscot, 306, 307. 

North Branch, 326. 

Northern Lights, 409. 

November, 294. 

Nuthatch, 121, 390. 

Nut Meadow, 295, 348. 

Nut Meadow Brook, 243, 296. 

Nutting's Pond, 325. 

Oak leaves, 23, 102, 206, 321. 

Oak lot, 136. 

Oak woods, 117. 

Oaks, 5, 80, 87, 96, 98, 102, 103, 108, 

110, 112, 218, 219, 250, 252, 300. 
Observers, 269, 270. 
Ocean, freezing of, 421. 
Officials, 107. 
Osiers, 395. 

Otter, 22, 79, 90, 337, 414. 
Owls, 23, 41, 126, 131, 219, 295, 320, 

321 322 
Oxen| 25, 176, 194, 195, 396. 

Pacing, 100, 1C1. 

Pain, 202. 

Paint, 257. 

Pansy, 254. 

Pantry, 258, 307. 

Pantry Brook, 373. 

Pantry Meadow, 324. 

Parasites, 282. 

Parmelia, 306. 

Parsees, 184. 

Partialness, 46. 

Partridges, 3, 48, 60, 80, 152, 261, 

301, 302, 316, 371, 381, 382, 423. 
Peat, 309. 

Pelham Pond, 197, 301, 325. 
Pennyroyal, 31. 
Persian, 197. 
Perth Amboy, 40. 
Peterboro' Hills, 104, 419, 420. 
Pfeiffer, Madame, 184. 
Pheasants, 29. 
Philistines, 114. 
Philosopher, 185, 186. 
Philosophia Botanica, 400. 
Piano, 239. 

Pickerel, 25, 50, 59, 212, 312. 
Picture, a, 291, 292. 
Pigeons, 313. 
Pigweed, 364, 382. 
Pine cones, 77, 251, 324, 420. 



Pine needles, 30, 335. 

Pine roots, 10. 

Pine stump, 336. 

Pine woods, 25, 30, 32. 

Pines, 63, 64, 77, 80, 86, 87, 97, 197, 

206, 218, 311. 
Pines, Norway, 46, 47. 
Pines, pitch, 23, 26, 27, 46, 47, 49, 

88, 98, 99, 261, 299, 300, 336. 
Pines, white, 10, 44, 94, 97, 98, 167, 

250, 296, 336, 398, 399. 
Pioneer work, 82. 
Plantain, 193. 
Pleasant Meadow, 315. 
Plutarch, 265. 
Pockets, 41. 
Poetic frenzy, 349. 
Poetry, 263, 403. 
Poets, 179, 217. 
Poke, 358. 
Politeness, 424. 
Ponds, 13, 25, 43, 88, 250. 
Pontederia, 34. 
Poplar, 94. 
Popped corn, 105. 
Post-office, 55, 56. 
Potter's Meadow, 30. 
Poverty,209, 353, 354. 
Powder mill, 129, 130, 131. 
Pratt's, 112. 
Precocity, 380, 381. 
Present, the, 316. 
Presentiments, 340. 
Primrose, 311. 
Prince, 178. 
Prinos, 85, 113, 125. 
Print, 411. 
Privacy, 422. 
Profanity, 292. 
Property, 196. 
Prose, 203. 
Prosperity, 253, 414. 

Quails, 347, 348. 
Questioning, 224. 
Quinsigamond Pond, 118, 429. 
Quinsigamond Village, 118. 

Rabbits, 134, 152, 313, 327, 381. 

Raccoons, 48. 

Railroad shanties, 367. 

Rain, 270, 271, 394. 

Rainbow, 128. 

Raleigh, 110, 116, 145. 

Reading, 222. 

Record on snow, 39, 89, 100. 

Red Bridge, 5. 

Red-house crossing, 101. 

Reed-mace, 248. 

Relations, 4, 76, 95, 162, 183, 218. 



INDEX. 



437 



Religion, 333. 

Reminiscences, 213. 

Repentance, 164. 

Repetition, 309. 

Resemblance, 332. 

Resistance, 273. 

Respiration, 72. 

Restraints, 169. 

Retirement, 422. 

Rhode Island, 170. 

Rhymes, 310. 

Rice, Israel, 58. 

Rig Veda, 228, 240, 241. 

Ringdove, 40. 

Riorden, Johnny, 5, 273, 274, 352. 

Ripley, Mrs., 180. 

Rivals, 187, 188. 

River, the, 7, 60, 80, 132, 148, 188, 

203, 209, 210, 234, 243, 250, 252, 

258, 276, 293. 
Rivers, 144, 177. 
Robin Hood, 9. 
Robins, 8, 29, 48, 54. 
Rock, 83, 84. 
Romance, 402. 
Rough and smooth, 136, 137. 
Routine, 230, 263. 
Rudeness, 191, 192. 
Rumor, 84. 
Russell, 180. 

Sabbath bell, 25. 
Salix alba, 199. 
Sallows, 312. 
Salutations, 273. 
Salvages, 425. 
Sand foliage, 73. 
Sanity, 58. 
Sanskrit, 241. 
Saskatchewan, 120. 
Sassafras, 360. 
Saugus, 174. 
Savages, 11, 66, 67, 90. 
Sawing, 187. 
Saw-mill Brook, 53, 234. 
Sawyers, 63, 64. 
Saxifrage, 132. 
Saxon race, 179. 
Saxonville, 326. 
Scenery, 189, 322. 
Schoolcraft, 170. 
Science, 19, 216, 403, 406. 
Sea-room, 408. 
Sea-serpent, 178. 
Seasons, 13, 123, 237, 256. 
Secrets, 418. 
Sedge, 188, 229, 314. 
Seed vessels, 190. 
Seeds, 185, 189, 327: 
Self-reliance, 2S0. 



Shadows, 102, 197, 198, 218, 219, 

250,320,420. 
Shakespeare, 116, 145, 264, 279. 
Shelter, 229. 
Shepherd's purse, 132. 
Sherwood, 9. 
Shore lark, 48. 
Shrikes, 13, 57, 67, 326. 
Shrub oaks, 27, 141. 
Siasconset, 46. 
Sickness, 202, 388, 414. 
Silence, 111, 217, 218, 358. 
Sin, 25, 111. 
Sincerity, 237, 317, 346. 
Sins, 144, 145. 

Six,mysteries of the number, 120, 121. 
Skating, 20, 58, 176, 301, 303, 324, 

325, 327, 373, 380, 429. 
Sketch, 361, 362. 
Skunk-cabbage, 132, 275, 380. 
Sky, 39, 73, 83, 96, 100, 127, 128, 

133, 157, 192, 193, 201, 206, 215, 

216, 225, 257, 311, 384, 418. 
Smoke, 100, 153, 154, 343. 
Snow, 26, 27, 44, 54, 79, 101, 116, 

140, 149, 166, 168, 181, 188, 207, 

209, 260, 261, 300, 321, 323, 327, 

328, 330, 408. 
Snow, a betrayer, 38, 79, 89, 100. 
Snow-birds, 13, 48, 59, 361. 
Snow-bow, 127. 

Snow-bunting, 55, 59, 89, 220, 307. 
Snow-cave, 210, 211. 
Snow-drifts, 21, 39, 54, 88, 89, 101, 

117, 146, 152, 153, 261, 425. 
Snow-flakes, 62, 119, 120, 125, 137, 

149, 166. 
Snow-fleas, 117, 179, 237, 297, 312, 

369. 
Snow-shoes, 91. 
Snow-stars, 120, 121. 
Snow-storms, 39, 54, 119, 120, 151, 

225. 
Society, 133, 136, 160, 205, 272, 353, 

357, 424. 
Socrates, 185. 

Solitude, 49, 134, 152, 259, 354. 
Song sparrow, 181, 271, 276, 314. 
Sorrel, 85, 251. 
Soul, the, 247. 
" Soul's Errand," the, 146. 
Sounds, 41, 44, 51, 78, 102, 129, 141, 

143, 147, 164, 296, 322, 356, 385, 

417. 
Southwest, 132. 
Spanish Brook, 250. 
Sparrows, 48, 181, 271, 276, 300. 
Spawning of fishes, 123. 
Speech, 115. 
Sphagnum, 152, 249, 307 



438 



INDEX. 



Spice Islands, 16. 

Spicula, 85, 86, 87. 

Spiders, 247. 

Spitzbergen, 55, 56, 87. 

Spleenwort, 311. 

Spring, 312, 402, 405, 419, 429. 

Spruce, 97. 

Squash, 262. 

Squirrels, 7, 31, 65, 79, 251, 402, 420, 

421. 
Stars, 40, 83, 216, 238, 323. 
Steam, 321. 

Stellaria media, 311, 341. 
Still life, 183. 
Storm, 407, 408. 
Stow, Beck, 300. 
Stow's wood lot, 97, 102, 390. 
Strangers, 111. 
Strawberry, 311. 
Strix Acadica, 126. 
Strix Asio, 36. 
Stubble, 98, 114. 
Stupidity, 387. 
Sudbury, 301, 305, 379, 380. 
Suicide, 42, 181. 
Summer, 163. 
Summer life, 51. 

Summer, memories of, 57, 62, 163. 
Sun, 217, 346. 
Sunbeams, 44. 
Sunday, 71. 
Sunlight, 114, 249, 250. 
Sunrise, 52. 
Sunsets, 18, 23, 38, 40, 100, 127, 128, 

156, 378. 
Superstitions, 184. 
Surveying, 113, 234, 368, 369. 
Swallows, 241. 
Swamp pink, 252. 
Swamp walk, 152. 
Swamps, 5, 10, 111, 112, 124, 131, 

152, 308, 309, 339. 
Swampscott, 178. 
Swans, 426. 
Swedish inn, 212. 
Symbols, 340, 382. 
Sympathy, 50, 202, 310, 378, 413, 416. 
Systems, 406. 

Tail's Island, 306. 

Tansy, 85. 

Tarbel Spring, 226. 

TarbelPs Meadow, 370. 

Tea, 339. 

Telegraph harp, 105, 1462, 19, 231, 

240, 248, 283, 390. 
Telegraph wire, 97, 146. 
Telescope, 163, 217. 
Texas 426. 
Thaw,' 132,' 156, 300, 301. 



Thistle, 251. 

Thorer, 393. 394. 

Thoughts, 223, 224, 256, 301, 341. 

Thoughts and dreams, 9. 

Tickets, 222. 

Time, 147, 190, 191, 341. 

Titmice, 132, 391. 

Tortoises, 421, 426. 

Townships, 108, 109. 

Tracks, 207, 293, 313, 322, 401. 

Tragedies, 341. 

Trail, 90, 287, 414, 415. 

Translators, 241. 

Travel, 157, 158, 161, 162, 163, 292, 

365. 
Traveler, 412. 
Treatise, 66, 67. 
Tree-sparrow, 27, 46, 89, 137, 152, 

189 190 364. 
Trees', 44, 46, 86, 87, 94, 96, 97, 116, 

198, 199, 250, 255, 287. 
Trench, 187, 266. 
Trillium Wood, 149. 
Trumpet weed, 85. 
Truth, 72, 83, 254, 378, 379. 
Truths, 52, 81, 336. 
Tuckerman, 351. 
Turnpike Bridge, 6. 
Tuttle's road, 274. 
Types, 183. 
Typha latifolia, 248. 

Uncle Charles, 88. 
Unconsciousness, 264. 
Understanding, 389. 
Unlikeness, 205. 

Vaccinium Canadense, 69. 

Vapor, 26, 51, 60, 129, 137, 164, 193. 

Varro, 175, 203, 233, 285, 323, 336, 

337, 370. 
Veronica, 251. 
Verses, 62, 156. 
Views, 422. 
Village, 242. 
Village street, 54. 
Vireo, 54, 171. 
Virgil, 61, 393. 
Virtue, 52, 72, 76, 145. 
Vision, confined, 15. 
Visiting, 390, 428. 
Voice, the, 335. 

Wachusett, 40. 

" Walden" [the Book], 119. 

Walden, 5, 14, 29, 48, 49, 91, 133, 

142, 146, 154, 183, 197, 274, 291, 

366. 
Walden Pond, 14, 23, 28, 39, 40, 49, 

79, 133, 197, 295. 



INDEX. 



439 



Walden Woods, 92, 179, 200. 

Walking. 163, 209, 259, 366, 384. 

Walks, 15, 22, 86, 133, 154, 274. 

Walnuts, 87. 

Walrus, etc., 49. 

Warmth and coldness, 2, 3. 

Warren Miles's mill, 57. 

Warren's Wood, 96. 

Washington, 17. 

Wasp, 247. 

Water, 53, 75, 225, 376. 

Water asclepias, 203. 

Water-bugs, 235, 243, 244, 245, 246, 

296. 
Water-horehound, 16. 
Water lily, 403, 404. 
Water rights, 188. 
Wayland, 301,305, 325, 326. 
We receive what concerns us, 122. 
Wealth, 95, 20S, 253, 283. 
Weasel, 174. 
Weather, 7, 53, 142, 257. 
Webster, 88, 104. 
Weeds, 27. 30, 31, 85. 
Weight, 310. 
Well Meadow field, 16, 133, 136, 

160, 1S2, 183. 
Weston's field, 14. 
Wharves, 21. 

Wheeler, Bill, 1S4, 185, 186, 187. 
White Pond, 296, 408, 409. 
Whooping of ponds, 20. 
Whortleberry family, 68. 
Whortleberries, 68, 143. 
Wigwam, 118. 
Wild geese, 247, 277, 278. 
Wilderness, 93, 94. 
Wildness, 399. 
Will, 266. 



Willow, 86, 87, 133, 177, 200, 252, 

256, 364, 370, 392. 
Wilson, 55. 
Winter, 117, 128, 137, 151, 153, 154, 

243, 256, 294, 295, 397. 
Winter afternoons,^!, 157. 
Winter berries, 97. 
Winter morning, 128, 137. 
Winter night thoughts, 62. 
Winter walk, 409. 
Withdrawal, 169. 
Wolf, 285. 
Wolf-traps, 174. 
Woman, a, 76, 111. 
Womanhood, 76. 
Wood, William, 148, 149. 
Wood-chopper, 26, 28, 63, 274, 275, 

291. 
Woodland, 109. 

Woodland walks, 133, 134, 135, 159. 
Woodlots, 92, 93, 200. 
Woodpaths, 96. 

Wood-peckers, 27, 141, 312, 361, 391. 
Wood-thrush, 78. 
Woods, 9, 15, 18, 44, 206, 207, 218, 

222, 250. 
Worcester, 118, 429. 
Words, 257, 263. 
Words and relations, 4, 76. 
Work, 231, 399, 400. 
Work in Heaven, 159. 
Writer, the, 12, 19, 20, 175, 239, 

254, 282, 333, 363, 416. 

Yellow birch swamps, 111. 
Youth, 194, 350. 
Youth and Age, 257. 

Zeno, 345. 



£tanfcara antr popular Hifirarp SSoofee? 

SELECTED FROM THE CATALOGUE OF 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, 



A Club of One. An Anonymous Volume, $1.25. 

Brooks Adams. The Emancipation of Massachusetts, crown 
8vo, $1.50. 

John Adams and Abigail Adams. Familiar Letters of, 
during the Revolution, i2mo, $2.co. 

Oscar Fay Adams. Handbook of English Authors, i6mo, 
75 cents ; Handbook of American Authors, i6mo, 75 cents. 

Louis Agassiz. Methods of Study in Natural History, Illus- 
trated, i2mo, $1.50; Geological Sketches, Series I. and II., 
I2mo, each, $1.50; A Journey in Brazil, Illustrated, i2mo, 
$2.50; Life and Letters, edited by his wife, 2 vols. i2mo, 
$4.00; Life and Works, 6 vols. $10.00. 

Anne A. Agge and Mary M. Brooks. Marblehead 
Sketches. 4to, $3.00. 

Elizabeth Akers. The Silver Bridge and other Poems, i6mo 9 
$1.25. 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Story of a Bad Boy, Illustrated, 
I2mo, $1.50; Marjorie Daw and Other People, i2mo, $1.50; 
Prudence Palfrey, i2mo, $1.50; The Queen of Sheba, i2mo, 
$1.50; The Stillwater Tragedy, i2mo, $1.50; Poems, House- 
hold Edition, Illustrated, i2mo, $1.75; full gilt, $2.25; The 
above six vols. i2mo, uniform, $9.00; From Ponkapog to 
Pesth, i6mo, $1.25 ; Poems, Complete, Illustrated, 8vo, $3.50 ; 
Mercedes, and Later Lyrics, cr. 8vo, $1.25. 

Hev. A. V. G. Allen. Continuity of Christian Thought, i2mo» 
$2.00. 

American Commonwealths. Per volume, i6mo, $1.25. 
Virginia. By John Esten Cooke. 
Oregon. By William Barrows. 
Maryland. By Wm. Hand Browne. 
Kentucky. By N. S. Shaler. 
Michigan. By Hon. T. M. Cooley. 



2 Houghton, Mifflin and Company's 

Kansas. By Leverett W. Spring. 

California. By Josiah Royce. 

New York. By Ellis H. Roberts. 2 vols. 

Connecticut. By Alexander Johnston. 
(In Preparation.) 

Tennessee. By James Phelan. 

Pennsylvania. By Hon. Wayne MacVeagh. 

Missouri. By Lucien Carr. 

Ohio. By Rufus King. 

New Jersey. By Austin Scott. 
American Men of Letters. Per vol., with Portrait, i6mo, 
$1.25. 

Washington Irving. By Charles Dudley Warner. 

Noah Webster. By Horace E. Scudder. 

Henry D. Thoreau. By Frank B. Sanborn. 

George Ripley. By O. B. Frothingham. 

J. Fenimore Cooper. By Prof. T. R. Lounsbury. 

Margaret Fuller Ossoli. By T. W. Higginson. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. By Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

Edgar Allan Poe. By George E. Woodberry. 

Nathaniel Parker Willis. By H. A. Beers. 
(In Preparation.) 

Benjamin Franklin. By John Bach McMaster. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne. By James Russell Lowell. 

William Cullen Bryant. By John Bigelow. 

Bayard Taylor. By J. R. G. Hassard. 

William Gilmore Simms. By George W. Cable. 
American Statesmen. Per vol., i6mo, $1.25. 

John Quincy Adams. By John T. Morse, Jr. 

Alexander Hamilton. By Henry Cabot Lodge. 

John C. Calhoun. By Dr. H. von Hoist. 

Andrew Jackson. By Prof. W. G. Sumner. 

John Randolph. By Henry Adams. 

James Monroe. By Pres. D. C. Gilman. 

Thomas Jefferson. By John T. Morse, Jr. 

Daniel Webster. By Henry Cabot Lodge. 

Albert Gallatin. By John Austin Stevens. 

James Madison. By Sydney Howard Gay. 

John Adams. By John T. Morse, Jr. 



Standard and Popular Library Books. 3 

John Marshall. By Allan B. Magruder. 
Samuel Adams. By J. K. Hosmer. 
Thomas H. Benton. By Theoc ore Roosevelt. 
Henry Clay. By Hon. Carl Schurz. 2 vols. 

{In Preparation.) 
Martin Van Buren. By Edward M. Shepard. 
George Washington. By Henry Cabot Lodge. 2 vols. 
Patrick Henry. By Moses Coit Tyler. 
Martha Babcock Amory. Life of Copley, 8vo, $3.00. 
Hans Christian Andersen. Complete Works, 10 vols. i2mo, 

each $1.00. New Edition, 10 vols. i2mo, #10.00. 
Francis, Lord Bacon. Works, 15 vols. cr. 8vo, #33.75 ; Pop- 
ular Edition, with Portraits, 2 vols. cr. 8vo, #5.00 ; Promus of 
Formularies and Elegancies, 8vo, #5.00; Life and Times of 
Bacon, 2 vols. cr. 8vo, $5.00. 
L. H. Bailey, Jr. Talks Afield, Illustrated, i6mo, $1.00. 
M. M. Ballou. Due West, cr. 8vo, #1.50 ; Due South, #1.50. 
Henry A. Beers. The Thankless Muse. Poems. i6mo, #1.25. 
E. D. R. Bianciardi. At Home in Italy, i6mo, $1.25. 
"William Henry Bishop. The House of a Merchant Prince, 
a Novel, i2mo, #1.50; Detmold, a Novel, i8mo, #1.25; Choy 
Susan and other Stories, i6mo, #1.25 ; The Golden Justice, 
i6mo, $1.25. 
Bjornstjerne Bjornson. Complete Works. New Edition, 
3 vols. i2mo, the set, #4.50; Synnove Solbakken, Bridal 
March, Captain Mansana, Magnhild, i6mo, each #1.00. 
Anne C. Lynch Botta. Handbook of Universal Literature, 

New Edition, i2mo, #2.00. 
British Poets. Riverside Edition, cr. 8vo, each #1.50; the 

set, 68 vols. #100.00. 
John Brown, A. B. John Bunyan. Illustrated. 8vo, #4.50. 
John Brown, M. D. Spare Hours, 3 vols. i6mo, each #1.50. 
Robert Browning. Poems and Dramas, etc., 15 vols. i6mo, 
#22.00; Works, 8 vols. cr. 8vo, #13.00; Ferishtah's Fancies, 
cr. 8vo, #1.00; Jocoseria, i6mo, #1.00; cr. 8vo, #1.00; Par- 
leyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day, i6mo 
or cr. 8vo, #1.25. Works, New Edition, 6 vols. cr. 8vo. 
#10.00. 
William Cullen Bryant. Translation of Homer, The Iliad 



4. Houghton, Mifflin and Company's 

cr. 8vo, $2.50 ; 2 vols, royal 8vo, $9.00 ; cr. 8vo, $4.00. The 
Odyssey, cr. 8vo, $2.50 ; 2 vols, royal 8vo, $9.00 ; cr. 8vo, $4.00. 

Sara C. Bull. Life of Cie Bull. Popular Edition. i2mo, 
#1.50. 

John Burroughs. Works, 7 vols. i6mo, each $1.50. 

Thomas Carlyle. Essays, with Portrait and Index, 4 vols, 
i2mo, $7.50; Popular Edition, 2 vols. i2mo, $3.50. 

Alice and Phoebe Gary. Poems, Household Edition, Illus° 
trated, 121110, $1.75 ; cr. 8vo, full gilt, $2.25 ; Library Edition, 
including Memorial by Mary Clemmer, Portraits and 24 Illus- 
trations, 8vo, $3.50. 

Wm. Ellery Channing. Selections from His Note-Books, 
$1.00. 

Francis J. Child (Editor). English and Scottish Popular 
Ballads. Eight Parts. (Parts I.-IV. now ready). 4to, each 
$5.00. Poems of Religious Sorrow, Comfort, Counsel, and 
Aspiratidft. i6mo, $1.25. 

Lydia Maria Child. Looking Toward Sunset, i2mo, $2.50; 
Letters, with Biography by Whittier, i6mo, $1.50. 

James Freeman Clarke. Ten Great Religions, Parts I. and 
II., i2mo, each $2.00 ; Common Sense in Religion, i2mo, $2.00 ; 
Memorial and Biographical Sketches, i2mo, $2.00. 

John Esten Cooke. My Lady Pokahontas, i6mo, $1.25. 

James Fenimore Cooper. Works, new Household Edition, 
Illustrated, 32 vols. i6mo, each $1.00; the set, $32.00; Fire- 
side Edition, Illustrated, 16 vols. i2mo, $20.00. 

Susan Fenimore Cooper. Rural Hours. i6mo, $1.25. 

Charles Egbert Craddock. In the Tennessee Mountains, 
i6mo, $1.25; Down the Ravine, Illustrated, $1.00; The 
Prophet of the Great. Smoky Mountains, i6mo. $1.25; In The 
Clouds, i6mo, $1.25. 

C. P. Cranch. Ariel and Caliban. i6mo, $1.25 ; The ^Eneid 
of Virgil. Translated by Cranch. 8vo, $2.50. 

T. F. Crane. Italian Popular Tales, 8vo, $2.50. 

F. Marion Crawford. To Leeward, i6mo, $1.25 ; A Roman 
Singer, i6mo, $1.25 ; An American Politician, i6mo, $1.25. 

M. Creighton. The Papacy during the Reformation, 4 vols. 
8vo, $17.50. 

Richard H. Dana. To Cuba and Back, i6mo, $1.25; Tw* 
Years Before the Mast, 12 mo, $1.00. 



Standard and Popular Library Books. 5 

G-. W. and Emma De Long. Voyage of the Jeannette. 2 
vols. 8vo, $7.50 ; New One- Volume Edition, 8vo, $4.50. 

Thomas De Quincey. Works, 12 vols. i2mo, each $1.50; 
the set, $18.00. 

Madame De Stael. Germany, i2mo, $2.50. 

Charles Dickens. Works, Illustrated Library Edition, with 
Dickens Dictionary, 30 vols. i2mo, each $1.50 ; the set, $45.00. 

J. Lewis Diman. The Theistic Argument, etc., cr. 8vo, $2.00 ; 
Orations and Essays, cr. 8vo, $2.50. 

Theodore A. Dodge. Patroclus and Penelope, Illustrated, 
8vo, $3.00. The Same. Outline Illustrations. Cr. 8vo, $1.25. 

E. P. Dole. Talks about Law. Cr. 8vo, $2.00; sheep, $2.50. 

Eight Studies of the Lord's Day. i2mo, $1.50. 

George Eliot. The Spanish Gypsy, a Poem, i6mo, $1.00. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. Works, Riverside Edition, 1 1 vols, 
each $1.75; the set, $19.25; u Little Classic'' 1 Edition, 11 vols. 
i8mo, each, $1.50; Parnassus, Household Edition, i2mo, $1.75; 
Library Edition, 8vo, $4.00 ; Poems, Hozcsehold Edition, Por- 
trait, i2mo, $1.75 ; Memoir, by J. Elliot Cabot, 2 vols. $3.50. 

English Dramatists. Vols. 1-3, Marlowe's Works ; Vols. 
4-1 1, Middleton's Works; Vols. 12-14, Marston's Works; 
each vol. $3.00 ; Large- Paper Edition, each vol. $4.00. 

Edgar Fawcett. A Hopeless Case, i8mo, $1.25 ; A Gentle- 
man of Leisure, i8mo, $1.00; An Ambitious Woman, i2mo, 
$1.50. 

Fenelon. Adventures of Telemachus, i2mo, $2.25. 

James T. Fields. Yesterdays with Authors, i2mo, $2.00; 8vo, 
Illustrated, $3.00 ; Underbrush, i8mo, $1.25 ; Ballads and other 
Verses, i6mo, $1.00; The Family Library of British Poetry, 
royal 8vo, $5.00 ; Memoirs and Correspondence, cr. 8vo, $2.00. 

John Fiske. Myths and Mythmakers, i2mo, $2.00; Outlines 
of Cosmic Philosophy, 2 vols. 8vo, $6.00 ; The Unseen World, 
and other Essays, i2mo, $2.00 ; Excursions of an Evolutionist. 
i2mo, $2.00; The Destiny of Man, i6mo, $1.00; The Idea of 
God, i6mo, $1.00; Darwinism, and Other Essays, New Edi- 
tion, enlarged, i2mo, $2.00. 

Edward Fitzgerald. Works. 2 vols. 8vo, $10.00. 

O. B. Frothingham. Life of W. H. Channing. Cr. 8vo, $2.00. 

William H. Furness. Verses, i6mo, vellum, $1.25. 



6 Houghton, Mifflin and Company % s 

Gentleman's Magazine Library. 14 vols. 8vo, each $2.50; 
Roxburgh, $3.50; Large-Paper Edition, $6.00. I. Manners and 
Customs. II. Dialect, Proverbs, and Word-Lore. III. Pop- 
ular Superstitions and Traditions. IV. English Traditions 
and Foreign Customs. V., VI. Archaeology. VII. Romano- 
British Remains : Part I. I Last two styles sold only in sets.) 

John F. Genung. Tennyson's In Memoriam, cr. 8vo, $1.25. 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Faust, Part First, Trans- 
lated by C. T. Brooks, i6mo, $1.25 ; Faust, Translated by Bay- 
ard Taylor, cr. 8vo, $2.50 ; 2 vols, royal 8vo, $9.00; 2 vols. i2mo, 
$4.00 ; Correspondence with a Child, i2mo, $1.50; Wilhelm 
Meister, Translated by Carlyle, 2 vols. i2mo, $3.00. Life, by 
Lewes, together with the above five i2mo vols., the set, $9.00. 

Oliver Goldsmith. The Vicar of Wakefield, 321110, $1.00. 

Charles George Gordon. Diaries and Letters, 8vo, $2.00. 

George H. Gordon. Brook Farm to Cedar Mountain, 1861-2. 
8vo, $3.00. Campaign of Army of Virginia, 1862. 8vo, $4.00. 
A War Diary, 1863-5. 8vo, $3- oa 

George Zabriskie Gray. The Children's Crusade, i2mo, 
$1.50; Husband and Wife, i6mo, #1.00. 

F.W. Gunsaulus. The Transfiguration of Christ. i6mo, $1.25. 

Anna Davis Hallowell. James and Lucretia Mott, $2.00. 

R. P. Hallowell. Quaker Invasion of Massachusetts, revised, 
$1.25. The Pioneer Quakers, i6mo, $1.00. 

Arthur Sherburne Hardy. But Yet a Woman, i6mo, $1.25 ; 
The Wind of Destiny, i6mo, #1.25. 

Bret Harte. Works, 6 vols. cr. 8vo, each #2.00 ; Poems, 
Household Edition, Illustrated, i2mo, $1.7$; ci . 8vo, full gilt, 
#2.25 ; Red-Line Edition, small 4to, $2.50 ; Cabinet Edition, 
$1.00; In the Carquinez Woods, i8mo, $1.00; Flip, and Found 
at Blazing Star, i8mo, $1.00; On the Frontier, i8mo, $1.00; 
By Shore and Sedge, i8mo, $1.00; Maruja, i8mo, $1.00; 
Snow-Bound at Eagle's, i8mo, $1.00; The Queen of the Pirate 
Isle, Illustrated, small 4to, $1.50; A Millionaire, etc., i8mo, 
$1.00; The Crusade of the Excelsior, i6mo, $1.25. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne. Works, "Little Classic" Edition, 
Illustrated, 25 vols. i8mo, each $1.00 ; the set $25.00 ; New 
Riverside Edition, Introductions by G. P. Lathrop, 11 Etch- 
ings and Portrait, 12 vols. cr. 8vo, each $2.00; Wayside Edi- 
tion, with Introductions, Etchings, etc., 24 vols. i2mo, $36.00; 



Standard and Popular Library Books. 7 

Fireside Edition, 6 vols. i2mo, $10.00; The Scarlet Letter, 
i2mo. $1.00. 

John Hay. Pike County Ballads, i2mo, $1.50; Castilian 
Days, i6mo, $2.00. 

Caroline Hazard. Memoir of J. L. Diman> Cr. 8vo, $2.00. 

Franklin H. Head. Shakespeare's Insomnia. i6mo, parch- 
ment paper, 75 cents. 

The Heart of the Weed. Anonymous Poems. i6mo, parch- 
ment paper, $1.00. 

S. E. Herrick. Some Heretics of Yesterday. Cr. 8vo, $1.50. 

George S. Hillard. Six Months in Italy. i2mo, $2.00. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes. Poems, Household Edition, Illus 
trated, i2mo, $175 ; cr. 8vo, full gilt, $2.25 ; Illustrated Library 
Edition, 8vo, $3.50; Handy-Volume Edition, 2 vols. 32mo, 
$2.50; The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, cr. 8vo, $2.00; 
Handy -Volume Edition, 32mo, $1.25; The Professor at the 
Breakfast-Table, cr. 8vo, $2.00; The Poet at the Breakfast* 
Table, cr. 8vo, $2.00 ; Elsie Venner, cr. 8vo, $2.00 ; The Guar- 
dian Angel, cr. 8vo, $2.00; Medical Essays, cr. 8vo, $2.00; 
Pages from an Old Volume of Life, cr. 8vo, $2.00; John Lo- 
throp Motley, A Memoir, i6mo, $1.50; Illustrated Poems, 
8vo, $4.00 ; A Mortal Antipathy, cr. 8vo, $1.50 ; The Last 
Leaf, Illustrated, 4to, $10.00. 

Nathaniel Holmes. The Authorship of Shakespeare. New 
Edition. 2 vols. $4.00. 

Blanche Willis Howard. One Summer, Illustrated, i2tno, 
$1.25 ; One Year Abroad, i8mo, $1.25. 

William D. Howells. Venetian Life, i2mo, $1.50; Italian 
Journeys, i2mo, $1.50; Their Wedding Journey, Illustrated, 
i2mo, $1.50; i8mo, $1.25; Suburban Sketches, Illustrated, 
i2mo, $1.50; A Chance Acquaintance, Illustrated, i2mo, 
$1.50; i8mo, $1.25; A Foregone Conclusion, i2mo, $1.50; 
The Lady of the Aroostook, i2mo, $1.50; The Undiscovered 
Country, i2mo, $1.50. 

Thomas Hughes. Tom Brown's School-Days at Rugby, 
i6mo, $1.00 ; Tom Brown at Oxford, i6mo, $1.25 ; The Man- 

• liness of Christ, i6mo, $1.00; paper, 25 cents. 

William Morris Hunt. Talks on Art, 2 Series, each #1.00. 



8 Houghton, Mifflin and Company's 

Henry James. A Passionate Pilgrim and other Tales, 1 2mo, 
$2.00; Transatlantic Sketches, i2mo, $2.00; Roderick Hud- 
son, i2mo, $2.00 ; The American, i2mo, $2.00 ; Watch and 
"Ward, i8mo, $1.25; The Europeans, i2mo, $1.50; Confidence, 
i2mo, $1.50; The Portrait of a Lady, i2mo, $2.00. 

Anna Jameson. Writings upon Art Subjects. New Edition, 
10 vols. i6mo, the set, $12.50. 

Sarah Orne Jewett. Deephaven, i8mo, $1.25 ; Old Friends 
and New, i8mo, $1.25 ; Country By-Ways, i8mo, $1.25 ; Play 
Days, Stories for Children, square i6mo, $1.50; The Mate of 
the Daylight, i8mo, $1.25 ; A Country Doctor, i6mo, $1.25 
A Marsh Island, i6mo, $1.25 ; A White Heron, i8mo, $1.25. 

Rossiter Johnson. Little Classics, 18 vols. i8mo, each $1.00 

the set, $18.00. 
Samuel Johnson. Oriental Religions : India, 8vo, $5.00 

China, 8vo, $5.00; Persia, 8vo, $5.00; Lectures, Essays, and 

Sermons, cr. 8vo, $1.75. 
Charles C. Jones, Jr. History of Georgia, 2 vols. 8vo, $10.00. 
Malcolm Kerr. The Far Interior. 2 vols. 8vo, $9.00. 
Omar Khayyam. Rubaiyat, Red- Line Edition, square i6mo., 

#1.00 ; the same, with 56 Illustrations by Vedder, folio, $25.00 ; 

The Same, Phototype Edition, 4to, $12.50. 
T. Starr King. Christianity and Humanity, with Portrait, 

i2mo, $1.50 ;. Substance and Show, i6mo, $2.00. 
Charles and Mary Lamb. Tales from Shakespeare. Han- 
dy-Volume Edition. 32mo, $1.00. 
Henry Lansdell. Russian Central Asia. 2 vols. $10.00. 
Lucy Larcom. Poems, i6mo, $1.25 ; An Idyl of Work, i6mo, 

$1.25; Wild Roses of Cape Ann and other Poems, i6mo, 

$1.25; Breathings of the Better Life, i8mo, $1.25; Poems, 

Household Edition, Illustrated, i2mo, $1.75; full gilt, $2.25 ; 

Beckonings for Every Day, i6mo, $1.00. 
George Parsons Lathrop. A Study of Hawthorne x8mo, 

$1.25. 
Henry C. Lea. Sacerdotal Celibacy, 8vo, $4.50. 
Sophia and Harriet Lee. Canterbury Tales. New Edition. 

3 vols. i2mo, $3.75. 
Charles G. Leland. The Gypsies, cr. 8vo, $2.00 ; Algonquin 

Legends of New England, cr. 8vo, $2.00. 



Standard and Popular Library Books. 9 

George Henry Lewes. The Story of Goethe's Life, Portrait, 

i2mo, $1.50; Problems of Life and Mind, 5 vols. 8vo, $ 14.00. 

A. Parlett Lloyd. The Law of Divorce, cloth, $2.00 ; sheep, 

#2.50. 

J. G. Lockhart. Life of Sir W. Scott, 3 vols. i2mo, $4.50. 

Henry Cabot Lodge. Studies in History, cr. 8vo, $1.50. 

Henry "Wads-worth Longfellow. Complete Poetical and 
Prose Works, Riverside Edition, 11 vols. cr. 8vo, $16.50; Po- 
etical W 'orks, Riverside Edition, 6 vols. cr. 8vo, $9.00; Cam- 
bridge* Edition, 4 vols. i2mo, $7.00 ; Poems, Octavo Edition, 
Portrait and 300 Illustrations, $7.50; Household Edition, Illus- 
trated, i2mo, $1.75; cr. 8vo, full gilt, $2.25; Red-Line Edition, 
Portrait and 12 Illustrations, small 4to, $2.50; Cabinet Edition, 
$1.00 ; Library Editioit, Portrait and 32 Illustrations, 8vo, $3.50; 
Christus, Hoicsehold Edition, $1.75; cr. 8vo, full gilt, $2.25; 
Cabinet Edition, $1.00 ; Prose Works, Riverside Edition, 2 
vols. cr. 8vo, $3.00; Hyperion, i6mo, $1.50 ; Kavanagh, i6mo, 
$1.50; Outre-Mer, i6mo, $1.50; In the Harbor, i6mo, $1.00; 
Michael Angelo : a Drama, Illustrated, folio, $5.00 ; Twenty 
Poems, Illustrated, small 4to, $2.50 ; Translation of the Divina 
Commedia of Dante, Riverside Edition, 3 vols. cr. 8vo, $4.50 ; 
1 vol. cr. 8vo, $2.50; 3 vols, royal 8vo, $13.50; cr. 8vo, $4.50; 
Poets and Poetry of Europe, royal 8vo, $5.00; Poems of 
Places, 31 'vols, each $1.00; the set, $25.00. 

James Russell Lowell. Poems, Red-Line Edition, Portrait, 
Illustrated, small 4to, $2.50 ; Hotisehold Edition, Illustrated, 
i2mo, $1.75 ; cr. 8vo, full gilt, $2.25 ; Library Edition, Portrait 
and 32 Illustrations, 8vo, $3.50 ; Cabinet Edition, $1.00; Fire- 
side Travels, i2mo, $1.50 ; Among my Books, Series I. and II. 
i2mo, each $2.00 ; My Study Windows, i2mo, $2.00 ; Democ- 
racy and other Addresses, i6mo, $1.25; Uncollected Poems. 

Thomas Babington Macaulay. Works, ~6 vols. i2mo, 
$20.00. 

Mrs. Madison. Memoirs and Letters of Dolly Madison, 
i6mo, $1.25. 

Harriet Martineau. Autobiography, New Edition, 2 vols. 
i2mo, $4.00; Household Education, i8mo, $1.25. 

H. B. McClellan. The Life and Campaigns of Maj.-Gen. 
J. E. B. Stuart. With Portrait and Maps, 8vo, $3.00. 

G. W. Melville. In the Lena Delta, Maps and Illustrations, 
8vo, $2.50. 



io Houghton, Mifflin and Company's 

T. C. Mendenhall. A Century of Electricity. i6mo, $1.25. 

Owen Meredith. Poems, Household Edition, Illustrated, 
I2mo, $1.75 ; cr. 8vo, full gilt, $2.25 ; Library Edition, Por- 
trait and 32 Illustrations, 8vo, $3.50; Lucile, Red- Line Edi- 
tion, 8 Illustrations, small 4to, $2.50 ; Cabinet Edition, 8 Illus- 
trations, $1.00. 

Olive Thorne Miller. Bird-Ways, i6mo, $1.25. 

John Milton. Paradise Lost. Handy- Volume Edition. 321110, 
$1.00. Riverside Classic Edition, i6mo, Illustrated, $1.00. 

S. Weir Mitchell. In War Time, i6mo, $1.25; Roland 
Blake, i6mo, $1.25. 

J. W. Mollett Illustrated Dictionary of Words used in Art 
and Archaeology, small 4*0, $5.00. 

Montaigne. Complete Works, Portrait, 4 vols. i2mo, $7.50. 

William Mountford. Euthanasy, i2mo, $2.00. 

T. Mozley. Reminiscences of Oriel College, etc., 2 vols. i6mo, 
$3.00. 

Elisha Mulford. The Nation, 8vo, $2.50; The Republic of 
God, 8vo, $2.00. 

T. T. Munger. On the Threshold, i6mo, $1.00 ; The Freedom 
cf Faith, i6mo, $1.50 ; Lamps and Paths, i6mo, $1.00 ; The 
Appeal to Life, i6mo, $1.50. 

J. A. W. Neander. History of the Christian Religion and 
Church, with Index volume, 6 vols. 8vo, $20.00 ; Index, $3.00. 

Joseph Neilson. Memories of Rufus Choate, 8vo, $5.00. 

Charles Eliot Norton. Notes of Travel in Italy, i6mo, $1.25 ; 
Translation of Dante's New Life, royal 8vo, $3.00. 

Wm. D. O'Connor. Hamlet's Note-Book, i6mo, $1.00. 

G. H. Palmer. Trans, of Homer's Odyssey, 1-12, 8vo, $2.50. 

Leighton Parks. His Star in the East. Cr. 8vo, $1.50. 

James Parton. Life of Benjamin Franklin, 2 vols. 8vo, $5.00 ; 
Life of Thomas Jefferson, 8vo, $2.50; Life of Aaron Burr, 
2 vols. 8vo, $5.00 ; Life of Andrew Jackson, 3 vols. 8vo, $7.50 ; 
Life of Horace Greeley, 8vo, $2.50 ; General Butler in New 
Orleans, 8vo, $2.50; Humorous Poetry of the English Lan- 
guage, i2mo, $1.75; full gilt, $2.25; Famous Americans of 
Recent Times, 8vo, $2.50 ; Life of Voltaire, 2 vols. 8vo, $6.00; 
The French Parnassus, i2mo, $1.75 j crown 8vo, #3.50 ; Cap- 
tains of Industry, i6mo, $1.25. 



Standard and Popular Library Books. n 

Blaise Pascal. Thoughts, i2mo, $2.25; Letters, i2mo, $7.25. 

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. The Gates Ajar, i6mo, $1.50 ; 
Beyond the Gates, i6mo, $1.25; Men, Women, and Ghosts, 
i6mo, $1.50; Hedged In, i6mo, $1.50; The Silent Partner, 
l6mo, $1.50; The Story of Avis, i6mo, $1.50 ; Sealed Orders, 
and other Stories, i6mo, $1.50; Friends: A Duet, i6mo, 
$ 1.25 ; Doctor Zay, i6mo, $1.25 ; Songs of the Silent World, 
i6mo, gilt top, $1.25 ; An Old Maid's Paradise, i6mo, paper, 50 
cents ; Burglars in Paradise, i6mo, paper, 50 cents ; Madonna 
of the Tubs, cr. 8vo, Illustrated, $1.50. 

Phillips Exeter Lectures: Delivered before the Students of 
Phillips Exeter Academy, 1885-6. By E. E. Hale, Phillips 
Brooks, Presidents McCosh, Porter, and others. i2mo, 
gi.50. 

Mrs. S. M. B. Piatt. Selected Poems, i6mo, $1.50. 

Carl Ploetz. Epitome of Universal History, 121110, $3.00. 

Antonin Lefevre Pontalis. The Life of John DeWitt, 
Grand Pensionary of Holland, 2 vols. 8vo, $9.00. 

Margaret J. Preston. Colonial Ballads, i6mo, $1.25. 

Adelaide A. Procter. Poems, Cabinet Edition, $1.00; Red- 
Line Edition, small 4to, $2.50. 

Progressive Orthodoxy. i6mo, $1.00. 

Sampson Reed. Growth of the Mind, i6mo, $1.00. 

C. F. Richardson. Primer of American Literature, iSmo, $ .30. 

Riverside Aldine Series. Each volume, i6mo, $1.00. First 
edition, $1.50. 1. Marjorie Daw, etc., by T. B. Aldrich; 
2. My Summer in a Garden, by C. D. Warner ; 3. Fireside 
Travels, by J. R. Lowell ; 4. The Luck of Roaring Camp, etc., 
by Bret Harte ; 5, 6. Venetian Life, 2 vols., by W. D. How- 
ells ; 7. Wake Robin, by John Burroughs ; 8, 9. The Biglow 
Papers, 2 vols., by J. R. Lowell ; 10. Backlog Studies, by C. 
D. Warner. 

Henry Crabb Robinson. Diary, Reminiscences, etc. cr. 8vo, 
$2.50. 

John C. Ropes. The First Napoleon, with Maps, cr. 8vo,$2.oo. 

Josiah Royce. Religious Aspect of Philosophy, i2mo, $2.00. 

Edgar Evertson Saltus. Balzac, cr. 8vo, $1.25 ; The Phi- 
losophy of Disenchantment, cr. 8vo, $1.25. 

John Godfrey Saxe. Poems, Red-Line Edition, Illustrated, 



12 Houghto?i, Mifflin and Company's 

small 4to, $2.50; Cabinet Edition, $1.00; Household Edition, 
Illustrated, i2mo, $1.75 ; full gilt, cr. 8vo, $2.25. 

Sir Walter Scott. Waverley Novels, Illustrated Library 
Edition, 25 vols. i2mo, each $1.00 ; the set, $25.00 ; Tales of a 
Grandfather, 3 vols. i2mo, $4.50 ; Poems, Red-Line Edition 
Illustrated, small 4to, $2.50 ; Cabinet Edition, $1.00. 

W. H. Seward. Works, 5 vols. 8vo, $15.00 ; Diplomatic His- 
tory of the War, 8vo, $3.00. 

John Campbell Shairp. Culture and Religion, i6mo, $1.25 ; 
Poetic Interpretation of Nature, i6mo, $1.25 ; Studies in Po- 
etry and Philosophy, i6mo, $1.50; Aspects of Poetry, i6mo, 
$1.50. 

William Shakespeare. Works, edited by R. G. White, Riv- 
erside Edition, 3 vols. cr. 8vo, $7.50 ; The Same, 6 vols., cr. 
8vo, uncut, $10.00 ; The Blackfriars Shakespeare, per vol. 
$2.50, net. (In Press.) 

A. P. Sinnett. Esoteric Buddhism, i6mo, $1.25.; The Occult 
World, i6mo, $1.25. 

M. C. D. Silsbee. A Half Century in Salem. i6mo, $1.00. 

Dr. William Smith. Bible Dictionary, American Edition, 4 
vols. 8vo, $20.00. 

Edmund Clarence Stedman. Poems, Farringford Edition, 
Portrait, i6mo, $2.00; Household Edition, Illustrated, i2mo, 
$1.75; full gilt, cr. 8vo, $2.25 ; Victorian Poets, i2mo, $2.00; 
Poets of America, i2mo, $2.25. The set, 3 vols., uniform, 
i2mo, $6.00; Edgar Allan Poe, an Essay, vellum, i8mo, $1.00. 

W. W. Story. Poems, 2 vols. i6mo, $2.50; Fiammetta: A 
Novel, i6mo, $1.25. Roba di Roma, 2 vols. i6mo, $2.50. 

Harriet Beecher Stowe. Novels and Stories, 10 vols. i2mo, 
uniform, each $1.50 ; A Dog's Mission, Littie Pussy Willow, 
Queer Little People, Illustrated, small 4to, each $1.25 ; Uncle 
Tom's Cabin, 100 Illustrations, 8vo, $3.00 ; Library Edition, 
Illustrated, i2mo, $2.00 ; Popular Edition, i2mo, $1.00. 

Jonathan Swift. Works, Edition de Luxe, 19 vols. 8vo, the 
set, $76.00. 

T. P. Taswell-Langmead. English Constitutional History. 
New Edition, revised, 8vo, $7.50. 

Bayard Taylor. Poetical Works, Household Edition, i2mo, 
$1.75 ; cr. 8vo 4 full gilt, $2.25 ; Melodies of Verse, i8mo, vel- 



Standard and Popular Library Books. 13 

lum, $1.00; Life and Letters, 2 vols. i2mo, $4.00; Dramatic Po- 
ems, i2mo, $2.25; Household Edition, i2mo, $1.75 ; Life and 
Poetical Works, 6 vols, uniform. Including Life, 2 vols. ; Faust, 
2 vols. ; Poems, 1 vol. ; Dramatic Poems, 1 vol. The set, cr. 
8vo, $12.00. 

Alfred Tennyson. Poems, Household Edition, Portrait and 
Illustrations, i2mo, $1.75; full gilt, cr. 8vo, $2.25; Illus- 
trated Crown Edition, 2 vols. 8vo, $5.00 ; Library Edition i 
Portrait and 60 Illustrations, 8vo, $3.50 ; Red- Line Edition, 
Portrait and Illustrations, small 4to, $2.50; Cabinet Edition, 
$1.00; Complete Works, Riverside Edition, 6 vols. cr. 8vo, 
$6.00. 

Celia Thaxter. Among the Isles of Shoals, i8mo, $1.25 ; 
Poems, small 4to, $1.50 ; Drift- Weed, i8mo, $1.50 ; Poems 
for Children, Illustrated, small 4to, $1.50 ; Cruise of the Mys- 
tery, Poems, i6mo, $1.00. 

Edith M. Thomas. A New Year's Masque and other Poems, 
i6mo, $1.50; The Round Year, i6mo, $1.25. 

Joseph P. Thompson. American Comments on European 
Questions, 8vo, $3.00. 

Henry D. Thoreau. Works, 9 vols. i2mo, each $1.50; the 
set, $13.50. 

George Ticknor. History of Spanish Literature, 3 vols. 8vo, 
$10.00; Life, Letters, and Journals, Portraits, 2 vols. i2mo, 
$4.00. 

Bradford Torrey. Birds in the Bush, i6mo, $1.25. 

Sophus Tromholt. Under the Rays of the Aurora Borealis, 
Illustrated, 2 vols. $7.50. 

Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer. H. H. Richardson and 
his Works. 

Jones Very. Essays and Poems, cr. 8vo, $2.00. 

Annie Wall. Story of Sordello, told in Prose, i6mo, $1.00. 

Charles Dudley Warner. My Summer in a Garden, River- 
side Aldine Edition, i6mo, $1.00 ; Illustrated Edition, square 
i6mo, $1.50; Saunterings, i8mo, $1.25; Backlog Studies, 
Illustrated, square i6mo, $1.50; Riverside Aldine Edition, 
i6mo, Si. 00 ; Baddeck, and that Sort of Thing, i8mo, $1.00; 
My Winter on the Nile, cr. 8vo, $2.00 ; In the Levant, cr. 8vo, 
$2.00; Being a Boy, Illustrated, square i6mo, $1.50; In the 



14 Standard and Popular Library Books. 

Wilderness, i8mo, 75 cents ; A Roundabout Journey, i2mo, 
$1.50. 

William P. Warren, LL. D. Paradise Found, cr. 8vo, $2.00. 

William A. Wheeler. Dictionary of Noted Names of Fic- 
tion, i2mo, $2.00. 

Edwin P. Whipple. Essays, 6 vols. cr. 8vo, each $1.50. 

Richard Grant White. Every-Day English, i2mo, $2.00; 
Words and their Uses, i2mo, $2.00; England Without and 
Within, i2mo, $2.00 ; The Fate of Mansfield Humphreys, 
i6mo, $125 ; Studies in Shakespeare, i2mo, $1.75. 

Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney. Stories, 12 vols. i2mo, each $1.50; 
Mother Goose for Grown Folks, 121110, $1.50; Pansies, i6mo, 
$1.25; Daffodils, i6mo, #1.25; Just How, i6mo, $1.00; Bon- 
nyborough, i2mo, $1.50; Holy Tides, i6mo, 75 cents; Home- 
spun Yarns, i2mo, $1.50. 

John Greenleaf Whittier. Poems, Household Edition, Illus- 
trated, i2mo, $1.75 ; full gilt, cr. 8vo, $2.25 ; Cambridge Edi- 
tion, Portrait, 3 vols. i2mo, $5.25 ; Red-Line Edition, Por- 
trait, Illustrated, small 4*0, #2.50; Cabinet Edition, $r.oo; 
Library Edition, Portrait, 32 Illustrations, 8vo, $3.50; Prose 
Works, Cambridge Edition, 2 vols. i2mo, $3.50; The Bay of 
Seven Islands, Portrait, i6mo, $1.00; John Woolman's Jour- 
nal, Introduction by Whittier, $1.50; Child Life in Poetry, 
selected by Whittier, Illustrated, i2mo, $2.00; Child Life in 
Prose, i2mo, $2.00; Songs of Three Centuries, selected by 
Whittier: Household Edition, Illustrated, i2mo, $1-75; full 
gilt, cr. 8vo, $2.25; Library Edition, 32 Illustrations, 8vo, 
#3.50 ; Text and Verse, i8mo, 75 cents ; Poems of Nature, 4to, 
Illustrated, #6.00 ; St. Gregory's Guest, etc., i6mo, vellum, 
$1.00. 

Woodrow Wilson. Congressional Government, i6mo, $1.25. 

J. A. Wilstach. Translation of Virgil's Works, 2 vols. cr. 8vo, 
$5.00. 

Justin Winsor. Reader's Handbook of American Revolu- 
tion, i6mo, $1.25. 

W. B. Wright. Ancient Cities from the Dawn to the Day- 
light, i6mo, $1.25. 



